


other people

by technicallyproficient



Series: Another Life [1]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M, don't ask me what though, some other shit too!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:54:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23423512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/technicallyproficient/pseuds/technicallyproficient
Summary: “No, I was wondering what might have happened had Danny never died, had Joe not been an awful person,” she tells him. “You show up in Broadchurch, take my job, and then we…work on cases about stolen livestock or some such. Me with my happy marriage and two kids, you with your…PTSD and broken heart.”Alec is listening to her intently, but still with a frown on his face.“We’d still have fallen in love. Don’t you think? Somehow?”-- "Something New" by @bitboozy
Relationships: Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Series: Another Life [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785901
Comments: 210
Kudos: 242





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! A few orders of business, before you begin: 
> 
> 1\. Like the synopsis suggests, this story re-imagines Broadchurch without most of its key plot points. Danny isn't dead, Joe isn't a pedophile. This means that we're starting out with Joe and Ellie together. Things will get better though. Scout's honor.
> 
> 2\. I happened to be drafting the first chapter of this story when I read the wonderful AU bit of "Something New." Kismet, right? My story isn't related, or occupying the same universe at all, so it isn't *technically* necessary for you to have read "Something New." But, you should anyways. Call it cultural enrichment, peer pressure, whatever. PLEASE read @bitboozy. 
> 
> Okay? Okay. Here we go!

Ellie eyes her reflection in the mirror as she fidgets with the buttons on her blouse. Her breasts have only recently decided to accommodate anything outside the maternity section, and while she’s a far cry from anything resembling her old self, she can’t deny that she looks good. Grey pantsuit, wrinkle-free lavender blouse. 

Today is the day she goes back to work.

She combs a few loose strands back, taming them with pins. And then: she breathes. Two deep breaths, in and then out. Time enough to steady her nerves, to ease the ever-present maternal guilt. 

“Alright, love,” she calls out, leaving their bedroom. “This is me off.”

Joe is clearing away the breakfast dishes when she walks into the room, a dish towel thrown over his shoulder and — what appears to be — some mashed banana on his trousers. Fred babbles happily from his high-chair when he catches sight of her, and her heart tugs a bit. 

She doesn’t want to leave him, or them. Not _really_. But just before she’d left to go out on maternity leave Jenkinson had dropped hints about a DI position, complete with a shiny new office and a bump in pay. 

Ellie’s fought for everything she’s had, her whole career. Every ounce of respect, of kindness, afforded to her at the office has been hard earned. 

Broadchurch may be a sleepy, seaside town without any real police action. But it’s her town. She knows its residents, the old abandoned roads that see drug deals and any number of petty crimes. 

They trust her here. They open up to her, respond to her warmth. Perhaps, at one time, rising through the ranks was not on her radar. But it is now. And she’s ready for it, this new, authoritative position. She is ready. 

“You sure about this?” Joe asks, cutting through her internal dialogue. “Couple more weeks off, we could take Freddie out to see my mum and dad… Wait ’til he sleeps through the night, maybe.” 

She smiles patently at him, trying to tamp down her irritation. This is a familiar row between the two of them. He’d been staunchly against her return to work, citing the strains of stay-at-home fatherhood to a toddler and a pre-teen. Her boys, stuck at home, with nothing to do but miss their mother. 

Of course, income being a not insignificant strain itself, she had won that particular round. But still. Ellie can feel his resentment this morning, a palpable third party in the room. 

“I’m sure,” she says, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. “And, I’m _late_.” She turns, grabbing a to-go mug of tea. “Bye, love.” 

She presses a few kisses to the top of Fred’s head, inhaling his sweet, infant scent and walks out the door.

She pretends she does not hear Joe’s sigh.

* * *

Her return to work is overwhelming. It’s everything at once. There’s cheers and applause as she walks in, a bouquet of flowers and a card neatly arranged on her desk. It’s bittersweet to see them all after such a long time away, to see how the office has changed. 

And then, suddenly, it’s just bitter. 

“Oh, you have got to be bloody kidding me!” Ellie’s eyes widen in disbelief as she begins to pace Jenkinson’s office, pondering the penalties for murder, aggravated assault, battery. The merits of damning Joe to a life of single fatherhood. 

She had been called into Jenkinson’s office shortly after arrival. Ellie had walked in with her shoulders back, an air of confidence about her that she hadn’t felt since before Fred’s birth. 

How quickly it had all disintegrated.

“Ellie-“ Jenkinson starts.

“No, hang on a minute. Let me see if I have this right.” She wheels around, facing Jenkinson again. “When I left here six months ago you all but promised me the DI position, but now, you’ve… what? Changed your mind?”

Jenkinson massages her temples, a look of pure resignation on her face. “His credentials are quite… extraordinary.”

Ellie barks out a laugh of disbelief. “It’s a he?!"

Jenkinson gives her a short nod. 

“Fuck’s sake,” Ellie says, bending down to grab her bag off of Jenkinson’s couch. “So much for bloody… feminism around here. Women supporting women.” 

Ellie slams the office door, muttering _wanker_ under her breath.

* * *

There’s a knock at the bathroom door, interrupting her. 

She had come in here to cry, seeking solace away from prying eyes, embarrassed at how quick her frustration had turned to tears.

“What?” She asks, hoping her sharp tone masks the sound of fresh tears. 

“Ellie.” It’s Nish, sounding awkward and out place. “Hardy’s looking for you.”

She doesn’t recognize the name, does a quick mental list in her head of all her co-workers names. Perhaps a marriage she’d somehow missed in her six months of maternity leave? A change in last name?

“Who?” She asks.

“It’s, uh. The new guy.” Nish pauses for a beat, choosing to let her puzzle what _new_ means in this scenario. “Says there’s been a shout from one of the farms nearby. Stolen cattle or something.”

“So?” She asks, indignantly. Like hell she’s helping him.

There’s a sigh from the other side of the bathroom stall. 

“He wants you to go with him. Help him find the farm.”

Ellie exhales loudly, wiping her eyes with a tissue for the final time before tossing it in the bin beside her. “Christ.” She wrenches the door open, causing Nish to jump back in surprise. “Where is he?” She asks. 

“He’s uh, in his office, I think. Waiting for you.” 

_His_ office. The one she’d spent months mentally re-arranging.

She strides across CID, fully intending to rip open the door of his precious new DI office and give him the bollocking of a lifetime. But, instead, he meets her halfway. 

There’s a rush of tall, lanky limbs coming towards her. She barely has time to take him in, this sickly looking man with an over-grown beard and wrinkled clothes. 

A nagging feeling in her brain startles her, and for a brief moment she has the strangest sensation that she’s seen him before. 

She shrugs it off quickly, scoffing loudly as he roughly bumps into her. He comes to stop beside her, his eyes not quite meeting her gaze. 

“DS Miller?” He asks, his thick Scottish accent butchering the ending. It comes out sounding something like Mill- _ah_. She hates it, hates him.

“Would prefer Ellie, actually, but—“ 

“Great,” he cuts her off. “Hurry up.” He tosses her a set of keys, quickly moving towards the door. “You’re drivin’.”

* * *

They don’t talk on the short drive to the Cunnhingham farm, save for the occasional muttered direction and answering grunt. Ellie takes the time to study him, with his worn, ragged features. 

She feels a second wind of anger rising up within her. Not only had she been denied a promotion, but she’d lost it to him. DI Hardy looked as if one strong gust of wind could blow him over. 

***

When they get to the farm she exchanges pleasantries with Michael, the eldest son, who had apparently called in the stolen livestock. He hugs her and asks about Fred, and they both ignore the weary sigh in the background. 

“Michael, this is…” She pauses briefly, stuck on the title. “DI Hardy. He’s new here, but apparently _very eager_ to get started.” She hopes he notes the sarcasm.

Michael takes them around the farm, showing them his vast array of livestock, pointing to the place where two cattle were last seen. 

She watches Hardy takes notes on a small pad he pulled from his pocket, noting the slight hint of annoyance behind his features. He’s an attentive listener, but bored. She can tell.

Apparently his _impressive_ credentials mean that he’s used to bigger things, running a nick that’s seen more than just stolen livestock and petty theft. Good, she thinks. She hopes he regrets taking this position. 

***

After they’ve collected all the information they need, they leave, promising Michael that they’ll call with any new leads they may have. 

“Stole my job, you know.” She keeps her eyes trained on the road, allowing herself a quick glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

He grunts, rolling his eyes. “What?”

“The DI job. It was supposed to be mine, sir. Was all but promised it.”

He’s silent for a long moment, and just when she thinks he won’t respond, he says, “Don’t remember it having your name on it.” 

She barks out a laugh at his bold sarcasm, his insolence. She’d expected something different, embarrassment perhaps, at being called out on stealing her job. 

“Christ, you are a complete arsehole.” She takes another cursory glance at him out of the corner of her eye, and for a brief second, it’s almost as if he’s smirking at that. That the idea of being called an arsehole by her is _laughable_ to him.   
  
“Well, if it was yours, why aren’t you in it?” He asks.

“I was on leave.” She waits for him to inquire about it, but he doesn’t. “Maternity leave,” she adds. 

She can feel him taking her in, as if for the first time. Noticing her slightly rounder face, her softened curves. 

“Right,” he says.

She exhales loudly, grateful to finally be pulling in to CID. “Right.” 

“Make sure you call in those leads,” he says, unbuckling his seatbelt and abruptly slamming the car door. 

Ellie sits in stunned silence at his rude exit, the overall gruff demeanor she’s just spent two hours with. 

“You’re welcome for driving,” she mumbles to herself in the car, unbuckling and racing to catch up with him. 

_What an arsehole._

* * *

At the end of her shift, Ellie turns off her desk light and prepares to leave with the mass of other people. For the first time all day she allows herself to feel the full weight of her longing to get back home, to Joe and her boys. She’d been so distracted by her anger at the new DI, and Jenkinson’s betrayal, that she’d hardly noticed. 

On her way out she turns back, taking in the almost completely dark office. Every light is off, save for his and a few others near the kitchen. He seems settled at his desk, as if he plans to be there for another few hours, at least. She contemplates going in to say goodbye, but quickly decides against it, watching as he removes a blister packet from his trouser pocket and pops two pills into his mouth. 

Shaking her head she turns around, making her way out the door and towards the car park. 

And all the while, she cannot shake the feeling that she recognizes him. That she’s seen him somewhere, before. 


	2. Chapter 2

At home that night she’s too busy to think about Hardy anymore. 

Ellie questions Tom incessantly about his day at school, makes Joe tell her about Fred’s every move during the eight hours she was away. 

There’s a nagging guilt that lingers, a bit, as she sits down for dinner that night. Joe had, of course, cooked something fancy to celebrate her first day back. She sips her wine and takes them all in, her boys, trying to note any major changes that have occurred throughout the day. 

***

She doesn’t mention the new DI until her and Joe get into bed that night. Ellie knows that he’ll likely be pissed, though it seems that more of his anger is being re-directed at _her_ , and none of it at the situation.   
  
“So she’s past you up, is that it? Brought in some Scottish bloke to run the entire department?” He asks, pulling back the covers. 

Ellie breathes through her nose, taking extra time to rub moisturizer into her face so that he cannot see her frustration. 

“Well,” she sighs. “If you want to put it like that, yeah. I guess she did.” 

Joe gets into bed, clearly waiting for her to join him. 

“Just can’t help but think that maybe this is a sign, somehow. ’s too soon for you to be back at work, El. And now, without the money…” 

She walks over, pulling back her side of the covers. 

“‘m already back at work, Joe. Can’t very well start another maternity leave, can I?” 

“‘spose you’re right.” He nudges her shoulder, a smile on his face. “But hey, no promotion means less hours at the station, right? Home in time for dinner every night…” 

She presses a quick kiss to his lips, and clicks her bedside lamp off. She feels tired, suddenly. Weary from months of the same argument, dragging on without a resolution. 

And what’s worse, she thinks, is that the entire time they’d talked about it, she hadn’t detected a single hint of sympathy. Joe had been glad she hadn’t gotten the job, happy to see her keep the DS title, with is more regular schedule. 

Tomorrow, and perhaps every day for the foreseeable future, she will return to CID and report to DI Hardy. 

But for now, all that’s left to do is sleep. 

* * *

Much of the week looks exactly the same as her first day.

Hardy stays in his office most of the time, his rumpled suits and stubbled face rarely making an appearance in any of the common areas. Out of the corner of her eye she watches him, occasionally, as he pops pills from the same silver blister packet, washing them down with a cup of tea. 

He rarely eats, if at all. She runs into him once in the kitchen, both of them fussing over their individual teas. He seems content to ignore her, not acknowledging her presence at all, which only serves to annoy her _more_. 

“Morning, sir,” she says, falsely bright. 

While she might normally favor the cold shoulder routine, Ellie is beginning to think that maybe the every day human things, like conversation and basic human decency, are her best bet at wearing him down. 

“Miller.” He drawls out the ending of her name, leaning in to his Scottish accent hard, and god, she loathes him. 

They leave the kitchen together, each going in their own separate directions. 

**

At the end of the week there’s a drug bust just off the high street, with a large enough profile to attract a crowd. And, much to Hardy’s chagrin, to attract the press as well. 

Maggie and Oliver linger just outside the perimeter, pens poised to take a quote for tomorrow’s _Echo_. Hardy spots them first, and Ellie notes the way his shoulders tense, the slight clench in his jaw. 

“DI Hardy, can you give us a quote on the record?” Ollie pulls his phone out, poised to type something. “Does this have anything to do with the other two heroin related busts last week?” 

“Bugger off,” Hardy mumbles. He starts to walk away when Ellie grabs him by the arm, scoffing. 

“C’mon, sir. ’s just the press.” She motions her head back to Olly and Maggie. “We cooperate with them around here, you know.” 

Hardy rolls his eyes at her. “Fine. On the record: bugger off, I can’t give you anything.” 

Ellie winces at his tone. She’s spent a week driving him to different sites and has yet to get used to it, the abruptness, the biting sarcasm he uses on anyone who talks to him. 

She can already see that he’s put Maggie off. But Olly looks more determined. 

“Care to quote on the Gillespie case, then?” Olly asks. 

Ellie watches, bewildered, as Hardy’s face quickly shifts from annoyance to anger. They hadn’t talked to anyone named Gillespie. Do Hardy and Olly have information that she doesn’t?

Ellie, Maggie and Olly all watch as Hardy storms off, making his way towards the car. 

“Oy, Oliver! What’s all this then?” She swats lightly at his arm. 

Oliver is mostly a good kid, precocious and annoying in a way that small town journalists sometimes tend to be. But, like his mother before him, he’s always had a knack for getting into trouble. Ellie would never openly come down on Hardy’s side for anything, but given Olly’s history, she isn’t entirely sure the rudeness was unwarranted. 

“El, don’t you know who he is?” Olly asks, looking dumbfounded. “That’s Alec Hardy.” 

He stares at her, as if expecting the information to suddenly materialize in front of her. 

“DI Hardy. The copper that fucked up the Pippa Gillespie case out in Sandbrook last year.” 

Ellie doesn’t anything to Hardy for the rest of the day. She had hoped he’d say something on the drive back, but he doesn’t, and she quickly decides not to ask him about it. Not yet. 

He stays holed up in office with the blinds shut while she works on paperwork. The light is still in on when she clocks out and goes home. 

****

She gets home that night and happily kisses her boys, ruffling Tom’s hair and promising she loves him more than chocolate before swiftly heading upstairs to get on the computer.

Hearing the name Pippa Gillespie had brought back a whole host of memories for Ellie, most of them blurry and vague. She’d been newly pregnant at the time, and quick to turn off any radio station that threatened to cover the news of a dead child.

She types into her computer **PIPPA GILLESPIE SANDBROOK** and scrolls through the pages and pages of results. She recognizes a couple local networks, plus the BBC and Channel 4. Ellie searches through the articles for Hardy’s name until she finds what she’s looking for. 

> “Local detective DI Alec Hardy makes grievous error in the Gillespie case when key evidence against the accused is stolen from his car.” 

She reads on, scrolling through various op-ed pieces, most of which focus on Hardy as the sole reason Pippa’s murderer is now roaming free. He’s even deemed, un-ironically, the Worst Cop in Britain. 

A nagging feeling tampers down the anger that threatens to overcome Ellie. Something about the coverage feels wrong to her. Jenkinson may be the worst self-proclaimed feminist Ellie’s ever met, but she isn’t stupid. In her office this week she had said that Hardy had _impressive credentials_. 

And Hardy was a lot of things, angry and rude, frequently sarcastic. But he wasn’t incompetent. His reaction to Olly’s question wasn’t embarrassment or shame, either. It was anger. 

Ellie is still jotting things down in her notebook when Joe comes in. 

"Still working?" He asks, an air of frustration in his tone. 

"No, actually." She tries to keep her voice cheerful and light. "Was just making some notes for tomorrow. Nothing major." 

She closes her laptop and moves towards him on the bed, reaching a hand out to stroke his cheek. "Mmmm, how was your day, love?"

He laughs when her thumb brushes past his ear, ticklish. "Let's see... I dropped Tom off at school, changed a thousand bloody nappies before lunch. Got some spit-up on one of my favorite jumpers." 

"Freddie spit-up on that soft blue one?" She laughs along with him at his answering nod. "That arsehole." 

"Had the same fight with Tom about homework too," he says, still chuckling. "Why'd we have kids again?"

She kisses him, long and slow, her arm tracing the firm muscle beneath his shirt. 

"You know, I can't for the life of me remember." 

* * *

Ellie studies Hardy during their car rides. All week she’s played chauffeur to him, navigating the abandoned, rural back-roads of Broadchurch while he sits silently and stares out the wind-screen. She glances out of the corner of her eye at him, occasionally noticing a blue-ish hue color his face before he takes his pills. 

He doesn’t ask her anything about her life, doesn’t comment on the pictures of Fred and Tom that fall out of the glove compartment one day when he’s looking for a napkin. Ellie thinks that he would be perfectly content to never talk at all, save for the rare word or two about whatever case they’re working on. 

She’s used to talking, though. A nervousness bubbles up inside her after hours of silence and she cannot stop herself from peppering him with questions, making idle remarks about the weather. Plus, it has the added bonus of irritating him. Something she finds more appealing every day. 

“Quite nice out.” She’s tapping a rhythmic pattern against the steering wheel, smiling to herself at his obvious irritation. 

“Guess so,” he grumbles. 

There’s a long pause, and then reaches for the dial on the radio, making to turn the volume up and effectively cease conversation. But, Ellie’s quicker. She slaps his hand away and scoffs. 

“Oh, c’mon then. We’ve been working together for gone three weeks and all I know about you is that you’re an even grumpier bastard than I thought.” 

He gives her an incredulous look, but does not respond.

“Surely there’s got to be… something! I don’t know. Kids? Maybe a wife you tricked into marrying you years ago.”

Since reading the media coverage of the Gillespie case online, Ellie’s hatred of Hardy has slowly morphed into something like morbid curiosity. He’s intolerable to ride in the car with, and hardly ever in the mood to stop for something to eat. But, she cannot find it in herself to hate him anymore. Not with so many questions left unanswered. 

He’s disagreeable, surely. But their angry, bickering back-and-forth is somewhat pleasing in its consistency. And she’s started to notice that he favors her, at least, in whatever way he’s capable. Hardy tolerates her in a way that he doesn’t tolerate anyone else in the office. 

“‘ve got an ex-wife.” 

She laughs. “I’m shocked.” 

“You want me to answer your question or not, Miller?”

“Sorry.” She mimes zipping her lips. 

“Right. So, an ex-wife. And… a daughter. Daisy.”

There’s an odd change in his face, one that she’s quick to pick up on. Hardy comes close to smiling when he mentions his daughter, but it’s pained, in a way. 

She’s hesitant to ask, but it’s right there. “Do they… live in Sandbrook, still?” 

He tenses up immediately, and she knows she’s lost him. “Yeah.” 

“Do you ever get back there, after P—“ 

“Think that’s ‘nough questions for today.” It comes out colder than normal, devoid of his usual sarcasm. Ellie feels something like shame in the pit of her stomach; she regrets even asking. 

She’d made a rookie mistake, something even basic detectives know not to do: she’d revealed her hand too early. Now, Hardy knows she’s read the news, has seen the profiles on him. Their feigned mutual ignorance — the very center of their working relationship — has evaporated, just like that. 

****

After their interaction in the car, Hardy goes back to ignoring her. Any progress they’d made in the previous weeks of overcoming their mutual hatred towards one another seems to have disappeared. 

And then, it resurfaces. 

Ellie is searching for her keys at the end of, what has to be, one of the longest shifts of her life, when Hardy calls her into his office. 

When she walks into his office, closing the door suspiciously behind her, she realizes it’s the first time they’ve seen each other since early this morning. They’d wrapped up a case some time before eight, and then spent the rest of the day bogged down with paperwork. He hadn’t left his office for so much as a bathroom break. 

“Sir?” She asks, trying to keep the nervousness out of her tone. 

“You asked me about Sandbrook.” It isn’t a question. Hardy takes his glasses off, rubs his eyes tiredly, clearly preparing for something. 

“I—“ She stops, re-directing herself. “I shouldn’t have.” Better to seem apologetic than over-interested. Hardy didn’t seem like the type to give into prying.

“Thought you’d be angrier.” She stares at him, confused. “You’ve seen the press, ‘m the Worst Cop in Britain.” 

“And a job thief.” 

He lets out a pathetic chuckle. “So, you have seen the press, then.” Again, it isn’t a question so much as… a confirmation, of sorts. 

“Some of it.” She takes a few deep breaths, preparing herself for a change in tactic. “Doesn’t really add up, if ‘m being honest.”

He eyes her curiously, and the directness of his gaze makes her stomach flutter a bit. “How do you figure?” 

“Making that kind of mistake, it’s just not… you.” 

Hardy scoffs. “Based on the month that you’ve known me.” 

Ellie levels him with a glare, waiting for him to stop shaking his head before she continues.

“I’ve seen the way you work around here. Sitting in the office all hours of the day.” She stops, works through the idea mentally. “You gave a bollocking to Brian the other day for not locking a door behind him. No way you’d be that careless.” 

At his silence, she continues, gaining momentum. “Plus, you’re still a DI. The media may have crucified you, but your own department didn’t. You didn’t get demoted.” She’s talking faster now, struggling to keep up with her own thoughts. “No, it wasn’t you. You took the fall for someone else. What I can’t figure out is… why?”

Hardy is silent for so long that Ellie begins to think he won’t answer, that they’ll merely sit across from one another until somebody interrupts them. 

“My ex-wife,” he says, finally. His voice is hoarse, tight and strained. “Well, she was m’ wife at the time.”

“What was she—“ 

“The pendant was stolen out of her car at a hotel. She was… meeting someone there.” 

Ellie feels her stomach drop as she begins to piece together the evidence he’s given her. 

“Was a man from our department,” he continues. “She’d been seeing him for about a year, at that point. I’d no idea, of course, ’til her car got broken into.” 

“And you covered for her?”

He sighs, wipes at his face again. He looks tired, she notices. Beyond exhausted. 

“My daughter — Daisy — thinks the world of her. I couldn’t… The media was all over me anyways, for how slow we’d been workin’ the case.” 

“She still doesn’t know?”

Ellie’s world is spinning from the information she’s just been given, from how completely she had misjudged him. 

“We don’t… talk much, since the divorce. She would have needed her mum more.” He says it with an air of finality, as if he’s accepted his fate. As if he deserves it. 

She sits in stunned silence for a while, processing everything. For a month she’s been silently cursing him, judging his every move, trying her best to irritate him every chance she’s gotten. 

And now… what? He’s still an arsehole, still sarcastic and rude, impatient. But, all the same, she feels differently towards him. Something not unlike sympathy, but deeper, maybe.

After all, what kind of man takes the fall for someone who has just betrayed them? Ellie finds that, perhaps, she doesn’t really know him at all.   
  
“You should go home, Miller.” His face is unreadable. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 


	3. Chapter 3

Ellie doesn’t sleep that night. Her mind buzzes, going over and over everything Hardy had told her, everything he had probably left out. 

Her and Joe had a row after she’d gotten home, too. Her conversation with Hardy had kept her late at the office, much later than she’d anticipated. And afterward, she’d sat in her car, not bothering to leave the car park. Just processing everything. 

Fred had been particularly difficult that day, tears off and on, unable to settle. And she’d missed dinner. The air was fraught with tension when she walked in the door. 

They’ve been fighting a lot more, lately. Since before her pregnancy. Joe had pushed for a second kid, and while she loves Fred — adores him more than life itself — she hadn’t really wanted to be pregnant again. Terms like ‘geriatric pregnancy’ had been tossed around. Amniocentesis, and then later, a particularly taxing cesarean section. An uncomfortable and ultimately sleepless maternity leave. 

The fact of the matter is: she is tired. Ellie finds she simply doesn’t have the energy for fighting anymore, cannot bear to listen to another guilt trip about the hours she’s logging at work.

So, she doesn’t.

“Look, love. I’m sorry. We got hit with a case first thing this morning and the paperwork took hours.” She pulls back the covers, crawling into bed. “Much longer than we expected, at any rate.” 

Joe seems to contemplate this for a moment before joining her in bed. But he’s distant still, silently angry. 

“All right?” She asks, curiously unmoved by his lack of response. 

“Yeah, fine.” He rolls away from her, switching off the light. “Night.” 

* * *

The next day at work she is eager to see Hardy. They get called out on another case of missing livestock — much to his chagrin — and she jumps at the opportunity to drive, to interview potential suspects with him. 

“Why did you tell me what you did, last night?” Hardy turns in his seat to face her, apparently surprised that she’d want to re-hash the details of their last conversation whilst on their way to a farm.

“I mean,” she continues, “you’ve already told Jenkinson, otherwise she wouldn’t have hired you. For _my_ job, I might add.” He laughs a little at that. “But you haven’t exactly worked to clear your name or anything.” 

“That—“

“Or tried to make a good impression.” She scrunches her nose a little.

“You gonna let me answer the question you asked, or are you gonna keep interruptin’?” He asks. “I mean, do you actually need me to be here for this, or can you figure it out yourself?”

“Oh, shut up.” She swats at his arm. 

“I was _going to say,_ that’s where you come in.” He looks out the window, suddenly shy. “I don’t want you to… clear my name or anything. I just want you to take a look at the case.”

She looks at him out of the corner of her eye, taking in his tense posture, the way he’s subtly faced away from her. “You thinkin’ of re-opening it?” 

“Don’t rightly know if I can, do I? I just want to see… if there’s anything we missed the first time around.” His fingers pick at some fraying on his trousers. “We were so rushed the first time around, by the press and the family. And when the pendant happened… I _know_ Lee Ashbrook did it, Miller. Just can’t prove it.” 

Ellie’s head spins a little, both at his obvious torment and the request he’s making. He’s asking her to comb through his biggest professional and personal embarrassment, to re-open old wounds. Does he trust her that much, or does he just not have anybody else? Maybe it’s a little bit of both, she decides. 

“And you want me to take a crack at it?” She tries to keep the bewilderment out of her voice. 

“Well, reckon you’re about as competent as any DS. Maybe a little on the chatty side, but certainly more… tolerable than the rest of the lot.” 

“Oh,” she scoffs. “Thanks very much. Nice, that.” 

There’s a brief moment when she thinks he’s smiling at her. It’s so quick that it barely registers, the slight upturn of his mouth, small crinkles forming near his eyes. 

“You know what I mean,” he says.

She does.

*****

The case doesn’t keep them occupied for long. Ellie can tell that Hardy is bored, restless from the monotony of small town procedural work. It’s always drugs and theft, or occasionally, someone using their scenic cliffs as a suicide spot. It’s a far cry from his time in Sandbrook, and farther still from his time as a beat cop in Glasgow. 

She can’t help but wonder if he’s always been this restless, if neat resolutions — the quick open and shut cases — have always left him uneasy, as if they’ve made a mistake. Overlooked some glaringly obvious detail. 

It’s late afternoon when he drops a thick file on her desk, his hand squeezing her shoulder briefly while he tilts his head towards his office. 

Ellie shrugs her shoulders at the confused stares from the other DS’s when she gets up to follow him, hoping to convey that she’s just as in the dark as they are. Though she isn’t really. 

Hardy remains unpopular amongst the rest of the team, having done nothing to gain their favor. The team has all, presumably, read the press on him too, though neither side acknowledges it. 

And there’s also a difference in the way he treats them all, an easiness around Ellie that doesn’t exist around anyone else. Everyone has started to notice, exchanging glances with one another when he quickly grabs Ellie anytime they’re sent out on a call. 

“What’s all this?” She asks, shutting his office door after she walks inside. She suspects she already knows, though, given the nervous look on his face.

“’s the Gillespie file. Take it home tonight, have a look at it. Let me know what you think.” 

She’s already paging through the file, words like _suffocation_ and _rohypnol_ jumping out at her. Beneath a school photo of Pippa, looking impossibly young with her crooked smile and wavy brown hair, she sees the autopsy photo and gasps. 

Ellie has never worked a murder case before, has only seen one dead body up close. The picture of Pippa, bloated and blue beneath the harsh light, makes her think of her own boys, bile rising in her throat. This had been Hardy’s reality every day for months, she thinks. It’s no wonder he’s so angry. He had waded through the river for her body, clutching at her, stiff and lifeless, until help had come. 

“Miller,” he grumbles, noting the change in her face. “Take it home with you. I don’t… want anybody else knowing we’re looking into this.” He pushes his chair back, making as if to stand up. “Not if nothing’s going to come of it.” 

It’s straightforward enough, but the vulnerable look in his eyes says something different. She hears: _I only want you, I only trust you_. 

“Right.” She stands up too, going towards the door. “I’ll make some notes tonight.” 

* * *

Fred lays on the bed beside Ellie, quietly dozing, his leg occasionally twitching in his sleep. She has the Sandbrook files spread out around her, a yellow legal pad resting on her lap. Every once in a while she’ll reach out, lightly scratching her nails across his stomach. 

It feels odd, at first, to be so engrossed in a file that details the horrific death of a young girl while sitting with her own child. But after a while, it’s a comfort. The warmth of his body, the steadiness of his breathing. 

She so rarely gets to enjoy stillness, anymore. Every moment that she isn’t at work is spent compensating for the time that she’s away; she changes nappies and helps with housework, works on her increasingly distant relationship with Joe. 

Tomorrow is Saturday, so Joe has taken Tom to the park to play football with Danny and Mark. She’s less tense with him away, unselfconscious about using this time to get work done. 

She finishes making a note on her legal pad and then reaches for her mobile, intending to call Hardy. 

“What?” He grumbles, his accent thicker than normal. 

“It’s me.” She pauses for a second, then asks, “Is that really how you answer your mobile? Grump.” 

“Miller?” There’s a hint of surprise in his tone, as if he can’t quite believe that she’d call him at home, after hours. 

“Thought we’d established that already.” 

He’s silent on the other end of the line for a while, long enough for her to notice that she’s smiling and can’t quite figure out why. His grumpiness is oddly familiar to her, makes her giddy in a way she doesn’t really understand. 

“ _Anyways_ ,” she says, having given up on him responding. “I’ve been looking at the file you gave me, and I have a few… notes, I guess.” 

“Oh.” Again, he sounds surprised. “Did you want to, uh… come over?”

Ellie sucks in a breath at his request, feeling oddly scandalized by it. He’s asking her to come to his house? Obviously he doesn’t mean anything by it, _she’s_ the one that called him, had mentioned having notes for him. So why does she feel so tense, suddenly? Heat trickles down her stomach, and there’s a slight tingling at the back of her neck. 

“No,” she says, quickly. “I— sorry, I can’t.” She shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts. 

“Okay.” Hardy sounds confused, unable to read her. “So when do you—“

“It’s just, I have my son with me. Fred. Anyways, I just got him to sleep and if I wake him up he’ll never go back down.” Ellie can feel a warm blush spreading across her cheeks. When had she turned into such a blathering idiot? The last thing he wants to think about is her with some baby, spit-up on her jumper, reeking of baby powder. 

“Miller, ’s okay. I just…” he sighs. “We can talk about it at work, ’s all I meant.”

“Right, yeah. That’s probably for the best.” He’s silent, so she keeps talking, increasingly nervous. “I’ll need to see it in person, though. To get a clear picture of the scene.” 

“You want to go to Sandbrook?” 

“I’ll _need_ to go to Sandbrook, yeah. These files have a lot of information, but if I’ve found enough to re-open this thing… I’ll need to meet the Gillespie’s. See where Pippa was found.” 

Ellie can’t imagine how hard this must be for him, to suddenly be faced with the possibility of revisiting one of the most difficult periods of his life. From what little press she’s read, she knows that the Gillespie’s don’t think much of him, either. 

“Bring your notes in on Monday and we can talk about it in my office after your shifts over.” He doesn’t explicitly confirm that they’ll visit Sandbrook, but she knows that if the evidence is there, he’ll be willing. There’s a determination about him that she’s never quite seen in another person before. 

“Okay. Sorry for… y’know, calling on your weekend.” She laughs nervously. 

“’s fine. Oh, and hey, Miller?” He’s silent for a second, clearing his throat. “Otis Redding.” 

“What?” She’s laughing now, thoroughly thrown by his change in topic. 

“When Daisy was wee—“ she chuckles again, and can practically feel him rolling his eyes. “When Daisy was _little_ she used to have colic and uh, only thing that would calm her down was being rocked to Otis Redding. ‘specially _These Arms of Mine_.” 

“I’ll have to try that, sir.” 

“See that you do.” There’s an air of faux-authority in his voice, and she realizes suddenly that he’s doing a bit. Playing the role of boss because she’d slipped and called him _sir_. “Goodnight, Miller.” 

“Night.” 

It isn’t until she hangs up her mobile that she realizes the muscles in her cheeks ache from smiling, that the image of him with a baby in his arms, lightly swaying to Otis Redding, had brought out something school-girlish in her. 

What is she thinking? 

*****

Over the weekend a simple disagreement with Joe about places to eat turns into a full-blown argument. He sleeps on the couch, and she pulls Fred from his crib, bringing him into bed with her for the first time in months. 

At the start of their marriage Ellie couldn’t conceive of things being the way that they are now, that they’d elect to spend nights sleeping apart, begrudging each other of every little thing. When she had promised to love and cherish him all those years ago, she had genuinely meant it. 

Only, at the time, she had also believed that love alone was enough. She’s not so sure that it is, now.

* * *

On Monday Ellie is distracted, antsy and eager to get to work. She sits at her desk and dutifully fills out paperwork, occasionally opening her bag to thumb through the files she’d brought from home. 

Sometime in the late afternoon she sees Hardy in the kitchen preparing a cup of tea. She’d come in for the exact same reason, and he smiles, bashfully, when he sees her, stepping aside to reveal a second mug. 

“Is that—“ 

“Yeah. Just uh, figured you might want some. Usually see you in kitchen about this time.”

She grabs the mug from him, taking a quick sip. “You made my tea right.” She smiles back at him.

He brushes off the comment, suddenly shy. He tilts his head towards his office. “You ready to walk me through your notes?”

Ellie’s so distracted by him, by the idea that he pays attention to when she comes into the kitchen and how she takes her tea, that it takes her a second to realize what he’s asking. 

“Sure, yeah. Right.”

Hardy’s looking at her oddly, but follows her to her desk nonetheless, both of them pointedly ignoring the stares of their co-workers. 

Inside his office he sits behind his desk, his own identical legal pad and pen laid out before him. He looks up at her, waiting for her to start. 

“So, couple questions, I guess.” Ellie pages through her own notes, trying to find the section where she had messily scrawled some things down. “It says in the files that Lisa Newbury’s body was never found. Is that still true?”

Hardy sighs, already mentally preparing himself. “Far as I know, yeah. We searched high and low, never came across it. With Pippa it was just… she was floating in the river, where anybody could find her.” 

Ellie makes a couple notes, trying not to stare too obviously at him. “And the main suspects were always Lee Ashbrook and…” she trails off, searching for the name. “Claire?” 

“Lee did it.” He’s quick to answer her, not bothering to even consider the implications of her question. “Why? Did something else jump out at you?” 

“It’s probably nothing, it’s just… Pippa’s parents, their statements say that they were at a wedding together all night. That’s why they had Lee and Claire child-mind, right?” 

He nods, suddenly becoming more attentive. “You don’t buy it?”

“I don’t know. Their statements match up.” She flips through her notes some more, looking for a what she had written down. “That’s kind of the problem though, isn’t it?”

“That their statements match?” 

He’s leaning closer to her, his weight resting on his elbows.

“Right. I mean, how many husbands do you think remember every person they talk to at a wedding? Let alone what the decorations look like, the venue… It’s odd.” 

“We thought that too. But people remember seeing Ricky there, he’s in photographs.” 

“The venue was what, though, thirty minutes away? Weddings drag on for forever. Least mine did.” She laughs, nervously. “He’d have had plenty of time. Not that I particularly _like_ the idea of a father killing his own daughter, and niece.”

When she looks up from her legal pad she notices the change in his face, something like admiration. She looks back down, feeling warm. “And another thing: why didn’t you find both bodies together?” 

He shakes his head, as if to clear his thoughts. “What do you mean?”

“Lisa’s still missing. _Presumed dead_ , it says on here, but still. Don’t you find it odd that you didn’t find her in the river with Pippa?” 

“You think… two different killers?” He’s scribbling furiously in his own legal pad now.

“Two different methods. Would make sense, wouldn’t it?” 

For a second they smile at one another, as the idea begins to take root. It’s the first solid lead Hardy’s had in over a year, and Ellie’s the one to have given it to him. 

“Okay,” he says, looking suddenly determined. “We can go to Sandbrook.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The basic facts of the case are, obviously, going to look a little different. Both because I am a) completely Making Shit Up, and b) Hardy decided not to hide a lady in his shack this time around! 
> 
> Oh, and finally: the Otis Redding bit was stolen from my dad, who rocked me to sleep to the very same song. Kudos to him for having good taste!


	4. Chapter 4

They drive to Sandbrook nearly two weeks later, on a Saturday, amidst the rain and wind. Radio 4 had said it would be the biggest storm this month, and looking at it now — trees tilting in the wind — Ellie thinks that perhaps they were right. 

She watches the raindrops trickle slowly down the windscreen, the wipers obliterating them before they get a chance to reach the bottom, and thinks back to her last fight with Joe. The one that let her come along on this trip. 

Ellie had come home from work that first Monday antsy and excited. She’d always found her work fulfilling, had loved keeping Broadchurch safe, but this felt… different somehow. The stakes where higher; there was a chance to make a _real_ difference. Hardy’s determination was infectious. 

Even still, she waits to tell Joe. At work her and Hardy set a tentative travel date and then begin organizing their notes, spending every spare minute compiling data. Hardy’s been burned before, he wants their return to Sandbrook to be efficient. 

As Saturday approaches she bides her time, takes her boys to the park after work, cooks dinner. She doesn’t tell him until Thursday. 

“Love, listen, I have to go to Sandbrook this weekend.” 

They’re in their bedroom again, where all of their fights have happened lately. Having a master bedroom in the attic is good for muffling all kinds of noises, as it turns out. 

“What?” The look he gives her is one she’s now become familiar with, incredulity mixed with something like apathy. 

“I— There’s a case we’re looking into. Bit of a… cold case we’re reviving, as it were.” It’s unlikely he’ll fail to make the connection to Pippa Gillespie, but she hopes for it anyways. 

“And it has to be done on the weekend, when you’re supposed to be off? The _two_ days a week you’re with your family.” 

Joe puts an emphasis on the word two, as if she isn’t already aware that she’s at work more than she’s home. She can feel herself getting angry, so she takes a few deep breaths. 

“I know, and it isn’t ideal obviously, but… we can’t do it during the week because it isn’t exactly, um, official yet. Just the preliminaries right now.” 

Joe walks away from her, going into the master bathroom for a second before coming back out. “Why is it that you keep saying ‘we’?” 

“Oh,” she chuckles nervously, running her fingers through her hair. “It’s Hardy’s case, really. He’s just asked me to consult.” 

He’s still for a second, and then she sees the awareness wash over his face. 

“Jesus, Ellie. Tell me you’re not looking into the Gillespie murder.” 

“It’s not official yet, we’re just—“

He cuts her off, an air of disgust. “You are. God, I cannot fucking believe you.”

His anger is building now, and she can feel herself growing distant from it, leaving her body. Lately it’s always this way. He’ll get in her face, put her down, and as soon as the tears start to build something inside her shuts off.

“It’s just one weekend,” she says quietly. “I leave Saturday morning and come back Sunday evening. Little over 24 hours gone.” 

“So, what? While you’re out gallivanting around, _playing_ at detective, I have to stay home and child-mind?”

“I can take them with me,” she offers. 

He scoffs at her, picking up his pillow and a blanket from the end of the bed. “Don’t bother. Probably wouldn’t recognize you anyways.” 

Joe heads towards the door, clearly intending on spending the night on the couch. But suddenly he stops, turning back around to face her. “You know what I can’t figure out, though? Why he picked you. You haven’t got the experience, the expertise to run a murder investigation.” He continues walking out the door, calling out over his shoulder, “You can’t even get a promotion.” 

* * *

Ellie and Hardy decide to visit the site where Pippa was found first. It’s raining too hard to get out, but from inside the car he points out where he first saw her body, the bluebells he had to trample to get to her. 

Noticing how shaken up he seems, Ellie suggests taking a quick break to eat and check into their hotel. She wants him to be completely settled and at ease — or as close to that as he can get — before they meet up with the Gillespie family. 

The hotel is small, with cheap decor and faded paint. It had been the only one with vacancies on such short notice, so Hardy had booked it, favoring a night in a dingy hotel over driving back during one of the biggest storms of the year. 

Ellie watches as Hardy interacts with the concierge, his fists clenched in apparent irritation. The young woman behind the desk looks concerned, and a little embarrassed. 

“All right?” Ellie asks, approaching both of them, hoping to mediate. 

Hardy can barely look at her, so she turns instead to face the concierge. 

“Ma’am, we have you on file as having booked one room, but your…” The woman trails off, looking to Ellie for help. 

“Partner,” Ellie supplies.

“Right. Your _partner_ has informed us that you now need _two_ rooms.” 

Ellie can feel her cheeks heat up at the implication. Maybe she shouldn’t have used the word partner. And why on earth had he only booked one room? 

“It was a mix up,” Hardy grumbles, as if having read her mind. “I booked it late, I must’ve… forgotten to add a second room.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “The bill didn’t tip you off? You didn’t see the total and think, hey, this is pretty cheap for two rooms?” 

“Clearly not.” He rubs at his eyes again, a sign Ellie has come to know as one of profound exasperation with the world. It _almost_ makes her smile. 

The concierge watches their bickering without even a hint of amusement. 

“Sorry,” Ellie says, as if noticing her for the first time. “Is there a second room we can rent, maybe?” She tries for cheerful. “We’ll pay anything.”

“Well, that’s the problem, ma’am. We’re completely booked for the night, I’m afraid.” 

“And it’s—“

The concierge holds her hand up, stopping Ellie. “A single queen bed, with no pull-out couch option available, yes.” 

Out of the corner of her eye she can see Hardy watching her, clearly wanting her to take the lead on this. She knows he’d never pressure her to share, and more than likely, he’ll offer to find accommodations elsewhere. To sleep in the car, if he has to. Knowing this, however, doesn’t stop the butterflies in her stomach, the nervous tingle at the back of her neck. 

Nevertheless, she tries for her biggest, brightest smile and says, “Great. We’ll take it. Thanks much.” 

******

“Piece of shite motel. Shite service, too.” Hardy is still grumbling even as they carry their bags through the door, having complained during the entire elevator ride. She’d be annoyed if she didn’t know that being angry was just his way of avoiding _being_ anything else. 

Ellie knows that deep down he’s embarrassed, too. Both at the mix-up and what she might be able to insinuate from it. 

Since Hardy had told her about the Sandbrook case there has been something flowing between the two of them, a current she can’t quite explain. She’s hesitant to call it innocent flirtation because that implies something that isn’t really there. 

He’s never complimented her, not really. He doesn’t make passes at her, or even so much as stare at her in an untoward manner. But, their banter feels charged in a way that its never felt with anyone else. There’s a surprising chemistry there that leaves her thinking about their conversations long after she’s left work for the day. 

When Hardy had told her about Sandbrook he had deepened their relationship, infused it with a level of trust that is potent, and heady. It makes her sweat. 

Ellie finishes unpacking her suitcases and then steps into the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face, freshening up a bit. When she steps outside Hardy is waiting for her, his hands in his pockets. 

“Is it time?” She asks. 

He nods his head. The irritation is mostly gone, now that he’s finished unpacking his stuff, and in its place is a nervousness that she knows has nothing to do with her. They are going to meet with the Gillespie’s. 

“Look,” she says, gently. “Let’s not worry about the room right now. It’s… fine.” She steps closer towards him, putting a hand on his arm. “For now, why don’t you brief me on the Gillespie’s. I’ve read the files but I wanna know everything. You’ve met them before. What are they like?”   
  
It’s mostly for his benefit that she asks. Ellie had gotten enough from the files, but she knows that work is his favorite distraction. Its constant demand and analyses drags him away from emotional torment.

Once Hardy starts to talk, he calms down a little. He’s cagey when she asks him whether or not he’s been in contact with the Gillespie’s since the pendant, which leads her to believe that they aren’t taking his calls. 

It’s hard not to be nervous, once Ellie realizes that her first time interviewing a murder victim’s family will likely be in a hostile situation, but she tries to tamper in down. 

***

After they arrive Ellie is quickly overwhelmed. It’s a lot to take in, the overwhelming sadness of both Cate and Ricky, two people suddenly, viciously robbed of the parental title. 

It’s a brief affair, Ellie and Hardy having not actually been _welcome_ , but she tries to take it all in, make mental notes to compare with him later. They get a brief tour of the house, and she can hardly breathe when they get to Pippa’s room, girlish and completely untouched in the year since she’s been dead. 

Ellie tries, most of all, to get a feel for Cate. She smells the alcohol on her breath, sees the way her jumper hangs off her body, and _aches_ for her. Cate seems distant from Ricky, though, the death of their daughter bringing about a natural strain in their marriage. 

Cate walks them out, not even bothering to hide her relief at their departure. As they drive away they wave a final goodbye to Cate, an odd feeling in their stomaches. 

“You put them in separate rooms now and ask them the same questions you did a year ago,” Ellie says, turning to him. “There’s no way their stories are matching up.” 

***

“Well. What’d you think of ‘em?” 

They’d decided to grab something to eat before heading back to their hotel, both of them too mentally exhausted to do anything but sleep once they get back to their room. The place is a bit fancier than what she might have chosen — a far cry from the chippy she frequents in Broadchurch — but it’s nice, and not too out of the way from their hotel. 

Her and Hardy have a table jammed somewhere in the corner, two chairs huddled close together. The food is surprisingly good, the atmosphere even better. She likes looking at him in the candlelight, his hair — still a little wet from the rain — mussed and messy. His knees bump against hers whenever he adjusts in his seat.

“Don’t know what to think,” she says, honestly. “My heart breaks for them, you know? Can’t _imagine_ being in their position. But Ricky seems… odd to me. Not as wrecked as Cate.”

The intensity of his gaze is distracting. She’s never noticed how passionately he listens, a concentrated furrow in his brow while she speaks, as if every word she says holds an enormous importance. 

“’s always been that way. Cate was a mess when we did the notification, couldn’t cope with it. But Ricky was always different. Stoic.”

“Think that’s just masculinity at work? Trying to be the stronger partner?” Ellie asks.

“Dunno, honestly. We’ve never had any leads on him, no reason to assume he’s lying.” 

She takes a sip of her drink, smiles at the baby a few seats away from them. When she turns back he’s looking at her, his expression unreadable. 

“Miss my boys,” she says. “Hard to be away from them. ‘specially my youngest.” 

He nods, and she feels a slight pang of guilt. Of course he understands missing kids. He hasn’t seen his own daughter in a year.

When it doesn’t look like he’s going to say anything, she adds, “Broke my heart seeing Pippa’s room like that. Same as it’s always been. Judging by the pictures of the house, it looks like her room’s the only thing they haven’t re-done.” 

Hardy sighs, signaling for the check. “I _know_ Lee did it, Miller. Just can’t figure out how it all fits.”

Ellie gathers her stuff up while they wait for the waiter to return the check, barely registering the fact that Hardy had paid the whole bill. “Where are they, by the way? Lee and Claire. The house next door was empty.”

“That’s the thing, Miller,” he says, standing up to leave. “Nobody on my team has seen Lee or Claire since we lost the pendant.” 

*********

Back at the hotel all of Ellie’s exhaustion fades away. She’s wired, a nervous energy over-taking her. Hardy had let her shower first, so she’s sitting on the bed waiting, flicking aimlessly through the telly in the hopes of finding a distraction.

After meeting with Cate and Ricky she’d all but forgotten about the hotel room situation, her mind distracted by all the new information she was taking in. But now, she’s got nothing left to think about. Only a single door and about ten minutes separate her from sharing a room, overnight, with Hardy.

She’s not sure why the prospect makes her so nervous. They’re both adults, and certainly mature enough to handle an awkward situation. But the problem is, it doesn’t _feel_ awkward. The nervousness she feels, the slight thrumming of her pulse, is anticipatory. First date nerves, almost. The feeling one gets at the beginning of things. 

“All right?” Hardy asks, the sound of the door opening making her jump slightly. 

“Fine!” Her voice is high-pitched, a bit airy. Always a dead giveaway when she’s lying. 

Ellie watches as he putters about the room, placing all of his toiletries neatly back in his bag. It’s the first time she’s seen him out of a suit, and it’s transformative. He looks softer, somehow, in sweats and a t-shirt. 

When he pops another pill out of his blister packet, she asks, “Are you okay?” At his face she adds, “The pills. I’ve seen you take them before. A lot.” 

“Right.” He tucks them back in his bag and sits down in the chair across from her, too nervous to make his way to the bed. “’s for my heart.” 

“Is it—“

“’s not serious. Not yet, anyway. Doc seems to think it has the potential to become that way, if I don’t find ways to… mitigate the stress in my life.”

“Well, you’re doin’ a bang-up job of that. Clearly.” 

Ellie feels irritated suddenly, though she knows she doesn’t have any right to be. His medical history is _personal_ , she isn’t entitled to every part of him. But it doesn’t stop her from thinking that she should be. 

“It’s just an arrhythmia.”

She scoffs. “I don’t think you’re supposed to say _just_ before any kind of heart condition. Knob.”

“‘m fine, Miller. Honest. Couple of these pills a day and I’m right as rain. Nothin’ to worry about.” 

Ellie gets up and starts pulling the covers back, needing to face away from him so that he cannot tell how emotional she is. “Yeah, well, who says I’m worried? You keel over, I’ve got a nice promotion waiting for me.”

He barks out a laugh, surprised. “Very nice. Remind me to ask someone else to do the eulogy, then.” 

She’s too overwhelmed to think of a witty retort, so she gets into bed, pulling the covers tight around her waist. 

The silence hangs heavy between them, and Hardy takes a moment to just watch her, admiring the way the lamplight highlights her bone structure. 

“Miller, I can…” He trails off, and she doesn’t say anything. For once, she lets him lead the conversation. “I can sleep in the car, if it’s too… much.”

Ellie lets herself think about it for a moment, teetering on the edge of a major decision. It scares her, how much she doesn’t want him to sleep in the car. She doesn’t have feelings for him, she _can’t_ have feelings for him, but she likes having him around. 

Despite his sullen, curmudgeonly attitude, the whole room warms for her when he’s in it. She can always find him in a crowd, tall and lanky, never meeting anybody’s eye. It feels safer with him in here, she rationalizes. 

“No,” she says finally. “Just… y’know, sleep on top of the covers. And try not to snore.” 

Hardy stares at her for a bit longer, as if trying to decide if she’s serious or not. Finally, he gets up, making his way toward the bed and she cannot breathe. When he lays on top of the covers and settles against the pillow, she clicks the light out, not wanting to see the image of the two of them in bed together for even a second. 

“Good night, Hardy.” She can already feel the warmth of his body, can smell his masculine shampoo.

“Good night, Miller.” 

This is the closest they’ve ever been. 

**

When Ellie wakes in the morning she feels impossibly warm, comfortable for the first time in ages, but for the slight scratching sensation on her forehead. 

She lets herself linger in the in-between stages for a bit, loathe to disrupt what has been, undoubtedly, the best sleep of her life. 

The press of an erection against her leg makes me her roll her eyes, and she’s just about to make a sarcastic comment to Joe when she realizes she isn’t bed with Joe. Which means…

“Shit.” She gasps, abruptly pushing herself away from Hardy. “Shit, shit, shit.”   
  
When had he gotten underneath the covers? And when had they… snuggled up so close to one another? Her body was practically draped over his, her head resting in the crook of his neck.

The sudden commotion wakes Hardy, and she watches his face as he drifts into consciousness, embarrassment finally finding its way into his expression as he notes his new position in bed and the _state_ of his body. 

Ellie bolts into the bathroom and closes the door before he has a chance to say anything, hoping that distance will ease their embarrassment. She takes her time, splashes cold water on her face and brushes her teeth for longer than she ever has before. 

By the time she comes out he’s in another suit, looking more composed. 

“Bathroom’s all yours,” she says. 

Hardy nods his head, flashing her an awkward grimace before the closing the door again.

She sits on the edge of the bed, head in her hands, and lets out a sigh. 

What the hell _was_ that? 

* * *

After they check out of the hotel they don’t talk much. Hardy takes her to a couple other sites around Sandbrook that his team had looked into at the time of the murders, and she makes thorough notes. 

Ellie tries to focus on the work, opting not to think about how _warm_ he’d felt earlier, how naturally their bodies had gravitated towards each other in the night. It’s difficult enough to meet his eye, already, and that’s without the intrusive thoughts. 

By the time they leave Sandbrook it’s late, much later than she had anticipated. They don’t get back to his house until half eight, which means she’s already missed Fred’s bed time, is bound to have already lost Tom to hours of video games. 

Hardy kills the motor, and they linger in his car for a bit, waiting for her to locate her own keys. 

“So, um,” she turns to face him. “Thanks for this weekend.” The connotation makes her blush, so she adds, “For taking me to Sandbrook, I mean.” 

“Right.” Hardy can’t quite meet her eyes, either. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Miller.”

He grabs her over-night bag for her, hefting it into the boot of her car while she settles behind the wheel. He offers her a somewhat awkward wave, then, and stays outside until she drives away. 

****

It’s quiet when Ellie gets inside her own home, all of the lights off. Inside her room she finds Joe standing near the dress, looking for a pair of pajamas. 

“Hey,” he says. 

She can tell he’s pissed about the hour, that he’s still angry at her for leaving, but she sublimates it all for now. 

In one swift movement she wraps her arms around his neck, kissing him, guiding him towards the bed. 

When they reach it and she starts to push him back, he holds a hand up, stalling her. “You sure?” He asks. 

Ellie doesn’t answer, instead undoing the buttons of her own blouse, quickly pulling off her trousers while Joe settles back on the bed. 

It’s the first time they’ve had sex in months, the first time she’s initiated it since the early months of her pregnancy, though she does not dwell on it. 

They turn all the lights off, and she closes her eyes when he pushes inside her, tries to focus instead at the feel of his hands on her hips. The feeling of his chest as she drags her nails across it. 

In her own desperate need for release she tunes him out completely, picturing instead an entirely different body, lean, strong arms. She’s just about conjured the Scottish accent when she comes. 

She keeps her eyes closed the whole time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course I kept the bed-sharing scene. 
> 
> Happy Passover and (early) Easter to all that are celebrating! Please enjoy this slightly sinful fanfic. x


	5. Chapter 5

Shortly after falling asleep Hardy wakes to a tapping at his door. He’d spent half the night tossing and turning, his mind replaying his weekend spent with Miller over and over. 

Something is changing between them, surely, but he doesn’t know how to explain it. Doesn’t know what it means that mixed in with the mortification and embarrassment, there’s a certain… lightness to him. Sleeping next to her had made him feel the warmest he’s felt in years and he wants to hold onto that, keep it close. 

And if he had to think about the softness of her body against him in order to fall asleep, well, so what? 

It’s with some guilt, then, that he dresses, half-expecting Miller on the other side of the door, ready to berate him for his subconscious transgressions. Or worse yet, wanting to _talk_ about what had happened in the hotel. 

But it isn’t her, of course. The blurry form behind the glass _is_ vaguely familiar to him, though, tall and masculine.

When he opens the door his blood goes cold, a puff of air leaves his lungs. It’s Lee Ashworth.   
  
“DI Hardy,” Lee says, smirking at Hardy’s surprised expression. “Good to see you.” 

Hardy grips the handle of the door tighter, willing his heart to begin beating regularly. “What the hell are you doin’ here, Lee?” 

“Heard you paid a visit to Sandbrook this weekend. Figured I’d return the favor.” 

Little has changed about Lee in the year since he’s seen him, save for the few new grey streaks in his hair. Looking at him now, Hardy has the strongest urge to hit him. 

He’ll never forget the look on Lee’s face when he and Tess had notified them of Pippa’s death, the smug, indifferent way he had handled a sobbing Claire. The behavior of a guilty man. 

“How nice,” Hardy retorts. “Anythin’ else?” He moves as if to close the door, but Lee’s hand lurches out, stopping him. 

“You re-opening the case?”

Hardy scoffs. “None of your business.” 

Lee holds his hands up, smirking. “Right then. Just curious.” 

“Whatever.” He scowls, trying his best to look intimidating. “But if I need _anything_ —“

“I know where to find you.” Lee raps his knuckles against the door and flashes Hardy a quick, threatening smile before turning away. “Goodnight, DI Hardy,” he calls over his shoulder. 

**

The next morning Ellie is already at work by the time he gets there, and he takes a second to look her over, taking in her loose curls and soft orange jumper. Every once in a while she’ll look up from her paperwork, glancing towards his empty office, visually confirming that he still isn’t in.

“Miller,” he calls out, and it’s heaven to watch her turn around. To see the little smile that spreads across her face when she sees him. It’s been years since anyone’s reacted that way to him. 

He strides towards his office and she follows him, closing the door behind her. Hardy loves that she automatically sits on his couch now, crossing her legs and allowing herself to lean back against it, luxuriating in its comfort. Like she belongs there. 

“Guess who came ‘round to mine last night?” 

She seems perplexed by his giddiness, and he thinks — not for the first time — that maybe he should smile around her more. 

“Not a _friend_ , surely.” She laughs at her own joke. “Pizza delivery man? Cable guy?” 

Hardy listens to her ramble, indulging her a bit. “Daft woman.” 

She makes a face at him, but then sobers. “Well, go on then. Who was it? The suspense is killing me.” 

“Lee Ashworth.” He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair, a smug smile on his face.

“What?” Ellie jumps up off the couch, and goes to move towards him. “How did he get your address?” 

She looks him over, as if trying to assess any potential injuries he may have acquired. For a moment her concern overwhelms him. 

“Don’t know. But, Miller, he told me he had _heard_ we were in Sandbrook this weekend.” 

She rolls her eyes at his lack of concern. He waits for the realization to set it. “You think he talked to Ricky?”

“He must have done,” he says. “Which means—“ 

“They keep in contact.” She’s smiling at him now, and it makes him warm all over. “You think Ricky would tell us where they live now?” 

“Doesn’t need to.” 

Hardy watches her move back to the couch, settling in against the cushion. “What is it you’re suggesting, exactly?” 

“We drop in on Ricky again, but this time we stick around to see where he goes afterward.” 

“You wanna go back to Sandbrook?” He knows, just by the way that she asks, that she’s thinking the same thing that he is. Another trip to Sandbrook, another night a hotel. It’d be difficult to justify making the same mistake twice, though he briefly considers it. 

“If it’s too much time away, I can…” 

“Go alone?” She asks. “To investigate two potential murder suspects? No sodding way.” She straightens, smoothing an invisible wrinkle out of her trousers. “I’m comin’ with you.” 

**

For the rest of the week Hardy falls into a predictable pattern. Every night he reviews the Gillespie case and then, when his eyelids grow heavy, he climbs into bed and pretends Ellie is with him. 

He’s drifting in and out of consciousness when the knock comes, having just conjured the exact feeling of her leg draped across his own, her hair tickling his chin. This time he’s prepared for Lee, and dresses quickly, throwing his shirt on backwards in his haste to get to the door. 

Hardy throws open the door and watches Ellie jump back at bit, clearly startled by his aggression. 

“Miller. What are you doin’ here?” 

“Sorry… Did I wake you?” She pushes past him gently, heading towards his kitchen. 

“By all means,” he calls out. “Come in.” 

Hardy rolls his eyes and follows her into the kitchen, watching as she digs through his drawers in search of tea, presumably. Or biscuits. 

It’s only when she turns around that he notices her outfit — a bright orange coat thrown over pajamas — and the small infant strapped to her chest. His mind stutters over this last fact, recalling all the times she’s mentioned her baby at home, how he’s responsible for the hours she spends away from this impossibly small human that somehow looks exactly like her. 

Ellie catches him staring and frowns a bit, then looks down. “Oh, this is Freddy.” She smiles, stroking his soft, fontanelle head with her thumb. “Not cool to bring a baby to work, I know, but I just got him to stop crying and I was afraid… Well, if I set him down he just starts again, so.” 

She looks frazzled and slightly teary-eyed, so he does not press her, doesn’t ask why she’s decided to show up at his house after midnight. Instead, he asks, “You lookin’ for a cuppa?” 

Her eyes light up. “God, yes. If you have one?” 

Hardy walks past her and grabs the kettle, moving to fill it up. “Got some files on the coffee table. Why don’t you look ‘em over and I’ll finish up in here?” 

Ellie nods and walks away, leaving him in the kitchen. He scrubs his hands across his face while he waits for the kettle to boil, an attempt at clearing his head. 

She’d been trembling in the kitchen, her hands shaking slightly while she opened his drawers and cupboards. In their relationship — _friendship_ , he corrects himself — she has always been the upbeat one, relentlessly positive in the face of every obstacle. It’s unsettling to suddenly have their situations so completely reversed. To be the one responsible for the cheering up, for the positivity. 

Hardy thinks that maybe the biggest act of kindness he could provide for her would be to simply ignore it, to not address the situation at all. He’ll provide work and conversation and hope that, eventually, the rest will all slip away. That she’ll stumble her way into the easy rhythm of their friendship, forgetting her pain in favor of teasing him relentlessly about his lack of manners, his social ineptitude. 

When he walks back into the sitting room he finds Ellie sitting on his couch, files spread out across the coffee table. He can see Fred’s head resting firmly against her shoulder. It nearly takes his breath away, how quickly this sight transports him back into a different, happier time in his life. 

“Right,” he says, setting the tray and a sleeve of biscuits on the coffee table. “No promises on the biscuits. I found them at the back of my cupboard, so they might be a little stale.” 

She smiles weakly at him, stroking her hand down Fred’s back. “Think I might… freshen up a bit first. You mind?” 

He knows that by _freshen up_ she means dry her eyes. Make it look less like she’s been crying. 

“Not at all. Bathroom’s the second door on your right.” 

In an instant she is rising from the couch, passing Fred off to him before he can even protest.

Hardy takes a few deep breaths and then, gently, lowers himself to sit on the couch. It’s been years since he’s held a baby. He’s forgotten how fragile they feel in your arms, how completely overwhelming it is when they settle against your chest, soft limbs curling into you. 

Fred still has that baby smell, milk and baby powder, mixed with something familiar to him. Ellie’s perfume, he thinks. For a baby he looks remarkably like her, long lashes and a straight, perfect nose. 

Just holding him feels like an extension of her, and it slows his heart rate. 

“Bit weird,” she whispers, walking back into the room. 

He looks up at her, a scowl on his face. She knows there’s no heat in it. “What is?” 

“Seein’ you with a baby.”

He scoffs. “Miller, I‘ve done this all before, you know. Been years, maybe, but ’ve changed a few nappies in my time.” 

Better to talk a big game than let her know how unmoored holding Fred has left him, how much closer he feels to her because of it. How much he misses his daughter. 

Ellie laughs and sits back down on the couch, re-claiming her place next to him and, very pointedly, leaving Fred in his arms. “Just a _few_ though, I’m bettin’.” 

“Get back to reading the files.” Hardy lightly covers Fred’s ears with his hands. “Arsehole.” 

***

Fred stays in his arms for the duration of the time that Ellie is at his house. They pass files back and forth while he idly strokes his back. 

Hardy very nearly forgets he’s there, but is quickly reminding by the slight snuffling sound in his ear. A tell-tale sign that Fred’s finally fallen asleep. 

Ellie chuckles softly at the sound, smiling at him. “‘spose we should get going now that he’s finally out.” She moves some files off of her lap, going to collect her stuff. “Don’t know how you did that, by the way. He never falls asleep in my arms anymore. Gotten so restless lately.” 

“It’s the slightly irregular heartbeat.” He gets up off the couch as well, following her to the door with Fred still securely in his arms. “Works every time.” 

“Ah, I knew there had to be a perk.” 

They walk out to her car together, and he loads Fred into his carseat while she tucks the rest of her stuff into the passenger seat. It feels oddly intimate, performing this ersatz domestic routine with her. He tries to ignore how cold his arms feel without Fred in them anymore. 

“Thanks for not askin’, by the way,” she says. “About why I came tonight.” 

He’s overwhelmed by the sudden urge to hug her, to wrap her securely in his arms and tell her that, whatever it is, they’ll solve it together. That it’ll all be okay. Instead, he says, “Course.” 

“Don’t know what I was thinking, coming here tonight,” she sniffles. “Half expected you to tell me to bugger off.” 

“Still can,” he retorts. “If it’ll make you feel better.” 

She huffs out a laugh, and then looks down, smiling at their shoes. As if she can’t quite meet his eye. 

He’s about to say something else when she reaches out, clasping their hands together, her thumb rubbing against his own. “I appreciate it,” she says. “All of it.” 

And then, just like that, she releases him, letting go of his hand and settling into her car. 

He doesn’t breathe until he sees her taillights disappear into the night. 

* * *

The next afternoon they drive to Sandbrook. She’s more quiet than usual, oddly introspective. Only talking when responding to a question he’s asked. 

Hardy’s never been particularly good at steering the direction of a conversation, but he tries. When he asks Ellie about Fred she brushes him off, mumbling something about both of her children being with a woman named Beth. 

He can’t help but wonder if this means marital problems. He knows she’s married; his eyes had clocked the ring on her finger in a matter of seconds during their first meeting. Beautiful, intelligent, warm. Of course she was married. 

But he’s noticed a slight change in her lately, a sadness. For all the hours they’ve spent together, with him listening to her talk at length about both of her children and her life in Broadchurch, she’s never once mentioned her husband. 

**

“How long do you think it’ll take?” She asks. 

They’re sitting in the car at the end of the Gillespie’s street, both of them watching for any signs of movement. They’d dropped in on Ricky earlier to ask a few questions, an air of nonchalance. He’d been irritated, only entertaining their questions for about five minutes before not-so-politely kicking them out. 

But the real show begins now. They’re waiting for Ricky to guide them to Lee and Claire. 

“Shouldn’t be too much longer, I wouldn’t think.” He reaches in the bag perched on her lap, grabbing a few grapes. Of the two of them, Ellie was always the one to remember snacks. “Probably just waitin’ until it gets dark.” 

She swats his hand away when goes to reach for more grapes. “You don’t think he suspects anything, do you?” 

“Doubt it. One of these guys may be a murderer, but they’re not… the smart kind.” 

Ellie laughs at this distinction. “What makes you say that? He seems like a reasonably successful bloke. Nice house, anyway. Gotta be doing somethin’ right.” 

“Look at what they did with Pippa’s body, though. She was placed in the river post-mortem. She didn’t drown.”

She turns in her seat to face him, finally relenting when he reaches for more grapes. “You think whoever did it panicked? Moved the body away from the crime scene because — “ 

“Exactly,” he says, munching on a grape. “They panicked. SOCO bein’ what it is now, we’d able to prove that she wasn’t murdered there in a matter of minutes.”

“So why move the body?”

“That’s what I can’t figure out.” He takes a long pull of water, noting the changes in the sky. The sun’s finally gone down, and as it slowly fades into night, they see a pair of lights beam down Ricky’s driveway. 

“Miller,” he squeezes her arm lightly. “Look.” 

They follow Ricky’s car at a safe distance, unsure what remote part of Sandbrook he’s guiding them to. As the street becomes more abandoned, leading to a dirt road, they wait for Ricky to drive down it and then park their car. 

Hardy grabs two torches while Ellie puts on her jacket, and then they set off towards the direction of his car.

“Do you think this is safe?” She whispers, struggling to keep up with his pace. 

“Just wanna hear what Ricky says to him.” He keeps walking, his stride quickening as they come up to a house in the clearing. He can’t see Ricky’s car, but he knows it’s there, knows that this has to have been where he’s stopped. 

Inside the house it’s dark, though they can both hear footsteps and the faint buzzing of voices. Hardy motions for her to come closer to him.   
“I’m going to walk around the left side, see if I can hear anythin’,” he whispers. “You take the right side.” 

She nods and walks away from him, her footsteps soft on the dirt. 

Hardy keeps walking, working his way around the left side of the house. He can just start to make out the sound of Ricky’s voice when he steps on a branch, the sound of it cracking beneath his foot uncomfortably loud in the otherwise quiet evening air. 

Suddenly, the voices stop and he can hear heavy footsteps, the sound of the front door slamming. And then, Ellie screaming, a high-pitched sound that goes straight through him. 

His blood goes cold as he runs toward the sound of her scream, ignoring the impulse to chase after the car that’s now speeding away, dirt flying out from the wheels. 

Hardy can feel his heart beating, can taste the adrenaline in his throat. When he finds her she’s splayed out on the dirt, her head alarmingly close to a rock. 

“Miller!” He shouts, his hands running across her body, checking for any wounds. “Mil— Ellie, can you hear me?” 

He feels something warm and sticky at the back of her head, and knows instantly that it’s blood. They knocked her down hard, shoving her against the dirt. The impact must’ve knocked her out. 

Hardy grabs his phone and dials 999, his fingers brushing a few tangled strands of hair out of her eyes.

“I’ve got you,” he mumbles, elevating her head above the dirt. “You’re gonna be alright. I’ve got you.” 


	6. Chapter 6

Everything’s a bit blurry when Ellie wakes up, her eyes unable to focus. She recognizes the tall, dark form in the corner, and coughs a little, hoping Hardy will notice that she’s regained consciousness. She’s nauseous, and too weak to talk. 

“You’re awake,” he starts, tripping his way over to her hospital bed. “You want some water? Or… help sitting up?” 

Ellie goes to shake her head and the action overwhelms her, a sharp pain accompanied by unbearable nausea. “I think… I need to—“ 

Reflexively, he grabs a small metal basin, holding her hair back while she retches into it. She’s mortified, but he doesn’t flinch. 

“Doc said that might happen for a little while after you wake up,” he says, brushing a few strands of hair out of her face. “You hit the ground pretty hard, got knocked out cold. Got a couple stitches too.” 

She groans, pushing the basin away from her face, the nausea finally subsiding. Hardy guides her back to a more comfortable position in the bed, finding a napkin and wiping at the corners of her mouth, offering her a plastic cup of ice water. 

Ellie sips at it slowly, then asks, “What happened? Did you—“

He sighs, scrubbing his hands across his face. “They must’ve heard us outside. I was at the other side of the house, and I heard you scream…” For the first time she notices how shaken up he looks, how distressed he is at seeing her like this. “When I saw you on the ground I… called 999 and waited with you until they came. I didn’t go after the car.” 

It take her a minute to process what he’s said. She tries to think back to a few hours ago, tries to recall the face of the person that knocked her down, but it’s all blurry, mixed in with the events of the last few days. 

“I can’t… remember what they looked like, the person that knocked me down,” she says. “I know it was a man in dark clothing, but it didn’t seem like Ricky.” 

“’s okay, Miller. I marked the location of the house, gonna run it though the software later and sees if it’s registered to anyone. If Lee’s name comes up we can drag him in for questioning, at least. For… assaulting an officer.” 

He winces a a little as he says _assault_ , and she knows he feels guilty, can feel it emanating off him in waves. Ellie had a feeling that he would find a way to blame himself for this. 

She’s thinking of ways to talk some sense into him when the nurse comes in, giving her eyes and head a last thorough examination before heading off to prep the discharge papers. 

When the nurse promises her that she’ll be able to go home soon, Ellie starts, frantic. “Oh, shit. The kids… I was supposed to call. Tom’s probably furious.” 

Hardy shrugs his shoulders at her, impossibly bashful. “I uh— I called them for you. Or, uh, spoke to a woman named Beth.” 

“You called Beth?” She tries to keep the shock out of her voice. 

“I remember you sayin’ something earlier about the boys being with her, so I just… called and told her you’d had an accident at work. Told her you were fine but that, if it was alright with her, you’d need her to keep the boys overnight.” 

“Oh…” She relaxes a little against the hospital bed, trying to puzzle out what to say next. “That was really nice of you. But where am I…” 

“Nurses won’t discharge you unless you confirm you’ve got overnight supervision, so you’re stayin’ at mine.” He’s more assertive about it than she would have thought, and she wonders briefly if offering to watch over her tonight is a form of atonement, a way to alleviate his unnecessary guilt.

“We’re not far from Broadchurch,” he continues. “Could stop on the way and grab you somethin’ to eat if you’re hungry, then turn in for the night.”

She brightens up at the offer of food. “‘m starved, actually.”

Hardy smiles back at her, and then sits down in the plastic chair by her bed, content to wait with her for the discharge papers. 

When the nurse comes back in with the papers, Hardy leaves to get the car, and — as per hospital policy — they wheel her out of the hospital shortly after. She holds onto his arm as he lowers her into the passenger seat, feeling unsteady on her own two feet. 

Hardy rolls his eyes at her plea for fish and chips, unconvinced that anyone in her _condition_ could want so much grease, but he acquiesces quickly. 

She shovels food into her mouth while he drives back to his place, and by the time he pulls up, she’s nodding off against the window. 

“Miller,” he whispers, rubbing her arm. “Let’s get you inside.” 

**

“No,” Ellie says. “Absolutely no bloody way. I’m not makin’ you take care of me _and_ taking your bed.” 

Hardy ignores her, pulling back the covers and fluffing up the pillows on his bed, not at all bothered by her resistance. 

“You’re sleepin’ here,” he grumbles, with an air of finality. “Don’t make me pull the boss card.” 

Ellie huffs out a laugh, then winces at the pain it causes. “Well… where are _you_ going to sleep?”

“On the couch.”

“Oh, is that what that sagging thing in the sitting room is?” 

She can see the beginnings of a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, but it passes quickly. He’s determined to get her into bed, to let her get some rest. 

Ellie had been released with strict orders that she be woken every few hours, and Hardy was resolved to make good on that promise.

She crawls in bed, finally, wrapping herself firmly in his duvet. It smells of him, like aftershave and his woodsy deodorant, and she finds herself relaxing into it. Breathing him in. 

“You gonna be alright staying awake all night?” She asks, drowsily.

“Course,” he says. “I’ll watch a movie or somethin’. Read.” 

She looks up to find him staring down at her, and the tenderness in his eyes nearly takes her breath away. She knows that a large part of him feels guilty about what’s happened to her, knows that he offered his home and his bed without so much as a second thought because he — in some misguided way — thinks that everything is always his fault. 

But it seems so much bigger than that, too. Ellie hadn’t mentioned her new situation with Joe, and yet he’d figured it out anyway. At the hospital he never offered to call her husband, never so much as hinted at taking her home. 

There’s an immense appeal to that, to having someone know what you mean without having to say it. To being understood. 

“Hardy,” she calls out, just as he starts to walk away. “You could… watch your movie in here. Right?”

He stares at her for a second before nodding, moving to grab the remote from off the television set. 

“I just don’t think I’m ready to be alone yet,” she mumbles, sliding over to the other side of his bed. She wonders if he knows how much she means it. 

He sits down on the bed beside her and she can feel his warmth instantly, lets it — and the soft background noise of his movie — lull her to sleep. 

**

A few hours later she comes awake to the feeling of a hand rubbing gently at her back, a soft, soothing pattern. 

“Mmm, time is it?” She mumbles, rolling over to face him. 

He smiles at her disheveled appearance, her curls abnormally wild. “’s about half one, maybe a little later.” 

Hardy turns his bedside lamp on and gently places two fingers beneath her chin, lightly lifting her head so that he can see her eyes. 

Her heart stutters a bit, and maybe it’s because of the later hour, but she doubts it. 

“Pupils look good,” he says. “How’re you feelin’?” 

Ellie clears her throat, tries to shake away the lingering heat from his gaze. “Fine, mostly. Little sore, but otherwise…” 

“I shouldn’t have had us follow them, should’ve… not separated from you.” He looks away from her, his gaze trapped somewhere near the floor. “’s my fault you’re injured. If I could do it over again, do it differently—“ 

“Stop,” she says, reaching out from beneath the covers to squeeze his arm. “None of this is your fault. I wanted to be there with you.” She stutters it out, trips over her words a bit, her brain getting stuck on the phrasing. It sounds a bit too much like _I want to be with you_. 

Hardy looks at her, then, his eyes boring into her own. Nobody’s ever smoldered at her before, but if they had, she imagines that this is what it would feel like. His eyes keep glancing at her lips, and it makes her stomach flutter. 

Ellie isn’t sure who leans in first, can’t possibly think about anything but his lips against her own. It’s just a soft press at first, dry lips against dry lips, but it feels wonderful, joyous. It’s the most alive she’s felt in months. 

The slight scratch of his beard makes her moan, opening her mouth to him, and he seizes the opportunity, slipping his tongue inside. She can feels his hands everywhere, gliding gently up and down her back, palming the sides of her breasts. 

It’s only when she starts to slide down, in the hopes of coaxing him on top of her, that she feels it. A sharp pain at the back of her head from the pressure. 

“Fuck,” she grumbles, moving her hand the back of her head. 

Hardy reacts as if cold water has been dumped on him, shifting as far away from her as the bed will allow.

He’s trembling, she notices, as he wipes at his mouth. 

“Miller, I… We shouldn’t have—“

The last thing on earth that she wanted was for him to walk it all back, to apologize for breathing more life into her than she’s felt in years. But, all the same, she knows it’s wrong. Knows it can never happen again, no matter how much she wants it. Or how often she thinks about it. 

“Sorry, that was—“ She breaks off, moving to lay back down. Settling herself underneath the duvet again. There's a surreal, dream-like quality about it all. She feels strangely giddy, hardly able to comprehend what's just happened, let alone regret it. Much as she knows she will, in the harsh light of day. 

“You should get some rest,” he says. She notices that he’s settled himself back in the bed, too, flipping off the lamp light. She had hoped he wouldn’t leave the room, but she's surprised all the same. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.” 

There’s a silence between them, not entirely uncomfortable, while she tries to fall back asleep. She watches the telly for a bit, laughing when she recognizes the film. “Is this _Casablanca_?” 

He laughs, too. “Figured a little Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman were in order. If ‘m gonna stay awake.” 

Ellie’s loved this movie for years. When she was pregnant with Tom she cried so hard at the end she got a bit sick, and didn’t watch it for years afterward. It feels a bit serendipitous that is should play now, here in the darkness, with Hardy of all people. 

“ _Of all the gin joints_ ,” she starts to quote, hoping he’ll get it. There’s a sick irony in it, in this whole moment that stretches before them.

“Yeah,” he agrees. 

Of all the gin joints, of all the CIDs, of all the lives in all the towns in all the world… he had to walk into mine. 

**

In the morning the air is fraught with an underlying tension. Last night's kiss comes flooding back to her, and she’s constantly aware of him as he putters throughout his house, cleaning dishes and arranging things. Neither of them can look at the other. 

He’d woken her, dutifully, twice more throughout the night, finally rising at around six to make tea and toast for the both of them. 

Now they wait for a text from Beth, signaling that both of her boys are awake and ready to be picked up. Hardy very pointedly does not mention her husband, doesn’t offer to make any calls on her behalf. And it’s this fact, combined with the cautious way that he’s treating her, that finally makes her snap. 

“You should just ask,” she says, sitting on one of his kitchen barstools.

He turns to face her, tossing the dish towel he’d been using over his shoulder. “Ask what?”

Ellie rolls her eyes at his feigned ignorance. 

“C’mon, Hardy, you’ve been avoiding it all weekend. If there’s somethin’ you wanna ask, or say, you should do it. I can handle it, I promise.” 

It comes out a bit more snappish than she’d intended, but she leaves it all the same. For so long they’ve been dancing around each other, only really hinting at things they want to say. She’s tired of it, exhausted by the whole thing. At the same time, there's something she needs to say. Something they haven't talked about yet.

“I don’t think this is the best—“ 

“Christ, ‘m not going to get mad at you, you knob. We’ve got about an hour before I leave to go pick my kids up, and then I don’t know what’s going to happen, or when we’ll have time to… talk like this again.”  
  
He nods, more to himself, and she thinks — not for the first time — that his ex-wife must have done a number on him. She’s never met anyone with his capacity for self-blame, with his fear of letting people down. 

“Why did you come over?” He sets the towel down, and moves to sit on a barstool next to her. “Earlier this week, you came over and it looked like you’d been crying.”

Ellie hadn’t expected him to start there, but of course she should have. She’d been a wreck when she drove over to his house, had nearly lost it again at the sight of him holding Fred so securely in his arms. Like a father would. 

“Joe left me.” She pauses for a brief moment, hoping to stall the tears that threaten to fall just at saying the words. “My husband, he um… left me that night.” 

She doesn’t mention that their last fight was over him, over the hours she’s logged at work lately, how often she’s gone. It wouldn’t matter anyway. 

“What?” He turns in his chair, facing her. “You didn’t say anything, I could’ve— Are you okay?” 

Her eyes start to water a bit, the pressure at the back of them almost unbearable. How long has she waited for someone to ask her that? And the fact that it comes from him, of all people, makes it almost worse, somehow. 

“Tom, my oldest, thinks he’s camping. For all I know, he very well could be camping, but he’s _gone_ … is the main point.” She swipes at her eyes, a bit mortified at how good it feels to talk about it. How good it feels to simply cry, to mourn what is lost. 

“Is he—“

“Coming back in a week. The separation… it’s just temporary, to see how we feel apart.” She pushes a few errant curls out of eyes. “I don’t know what ‘m going to do.”

Hardy sits in silence beside her for a moment, and she can tell that he’s at loss for what to say. Ellie simply watches him, waiting for him to puzzle out the inevitable, to realize where she's leading him.

“You should take some time off,” he says, finally. “Be with your boys. I can, um… hold off on Sandbrook, for now. Or… proceed without you, if that’s what needs to happen.”

Ellie sighs, trying to decide if he’s being purposefully dense or if he truly doesn’t understand what she’s implying. 

“Hardy, I can still work the Sandbrook case. It’s… the rest of it.”

She sees his expression darken in recognition, but he hides it quickly, rubbing his hands across his face. 

“So when you said you weren’t sure when we’d have time, you meant—“ 

“I meant that I can’t do this,” she gestures vaguely between them, “anymore. No more late nights, no more weekend trips to Sandbrook. At least not for a while. And…” 

Ellie lets her unfinished sentence linger between them, knowing that he’ll fill in the blanks. 

Things can’t continue on between them as they were. She has no idea if her marriage with Joe will continue, let alone if she actually _wants_ it to, but she needs the space to figure it out without him… clouding her judgement. 

She can’t come to pieces every time he stands too close to her, every time their knees brush up against one another while looking at a file. It just isn’t sustainable. 

Hardy meets her eyes again, finally, the dark brown of his own unreadable. “Last night was a mistake,” he says. His tone is cold, harsh. He’s never spoken to her this way before. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.” 

It’s a crushing blow, to hear him dismiss their shared intimacy so formally, to brush it off as if it were nothing. As if it meant nothing to him. But, all the same, it's what she's been looking for, she realizes. She'd started this conversation in the hopes of pushing him away, starting a fight just to convince herself she didn't love him.

Somewhere in the kitchen she hears her phone buzz and knows, instinctively, that it’s Beth, letting her know it’s time to pick up her boys. 

She can’t seem to move from her position in his chair, though. Ellie had wanted this conversation to happen, had _needed_ him to understand the impossible position she’s in. But now, getting up and walking away suddenly seems unfathomable. The hardest thing she’s had to face yet, by far. 

“I have to go,” she mumbles, wiping her eyes as she gets up and walk out the door. 

She doesn’t look back. 


	7. Chapter 7

“Holy shit, El, are you okay?” 

At the sight of Ellie walking into her house, Beth immediately sets her tea down and comes running towards her, eyes assessing the damage. 

“That man, DI Hardy… He’d said you were injured, but he didn’t say it was _this_ bad. You look like hell.”

“Oh, thanks much.” Ellie tries to smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She sobers quickly. “Do I really look awful? I don’t wanna scare the boys.” 

Beth stares at her for a moment, taking in her red-rimmed eyes and puffy face. 

“You know, the boys are still upstairs minding Fred. They could probably stand to play FIFA for another couple hours.” She goes to the kettle, pouring Ellie a cup of tea. “How ‘bout you tell me what happened, see if we can’t straighten things out before you head back to yours.” 

It’s a scene like any other. Ellie could close her eyes and be transported to any moment throughout the last few years that looked exactly like this one. A warm cup of tea in her hands, the distant sound of boys shouting upstairs. 

She tells Beth everything, beginning first with how Hardy had stolen her job — and then, in quick succession — her heart. Ellie tells her about Sandbrook, the mounting evidence they’ve collected against the father and the neighbors. She talks about her fights with Joe, the way he’d walked out on her without so much as saying goodbye to the kids. 

How she’d had to lie to Tom about where he went, then text Joe to make sure their stories were straight. She’d never conspired against her own child before, never so much as lied to make things easier. It makes her sick to her stomach. 

Beth nods at different intervals, staying quiet throughout, only allowing herself to squeeze Ellie’s hand in sympathy. It feels good to talk to about it with a neutral party, to unpack her emotions with someone who won’t judge her for them later. 

When she’s finished Beth gets up, handing her a tissue to wipe her eyes. “So… this Hardy bloke, ’s he good looking? Is he, y’know, fit?” 

Ellie can’t help it, she laughs. A wet, hiccuping laugh. It almost hurts her cheeks to smile. “Beth!” 

Beth laughs too, coming to sit down beside her. “Oh, what! I’ve got plenty of questions for you. Best to start with the most important ones.” 

“Quite right,” Ellie laughs. She pauses for a second, looking down at her hands on the table, playing with her thumbnail.

“Christ, El. You’re blushin’.” Beth studies her, waiting for her to answer. 

Ellie can feel the warmth spreading across her cheeks, working its way up the back of her neck. “Yes, okay. He’s fit. Got a bit of a… beard thing goin’ on, brown hair. Kind of muscular too.” The blush spreads grows. “And he’s tall, too. Big.” 

Beth nods. “Mmmm, I’ll bet. And Scottish too, if I remember.” 

“Very.” Ellie laughs. “Used the word _bairn_ the other day, when he was talkin’ to me. I about died.” 

The women smile at each other for a moment before quickly sobering. Ellie feels both better and worse for having talked to Beth. Vocalizing her attraction to Hardy has made it more real, adding a new dimension to an already impossible situation. 

She’s spoken her feelings into existence, and now they’re all she can think about. 

“What’re you going to do, then?” Beth asks, softly. 

“That’s the thing,” Ellie answers. “I don’t know yet.” 

**

The following week passes quickly. Hardy gets the results he needs from the database, and spends hours prepping himself for an interview with Lee. 

Ellie clocks out every day at three, allowing herself enough time to pick up Tom from school and collect Fred from his temporary child-minder.

They don’t talk. 

The Broadchurch CID operates in much the same way it always has, but it differs slightly, too. Ellie no longer spends hours in Hardy’s office, the two of them conspiring over cups of tea and mountains of paperwork. 

On the rare days when Hardy is called out, he grabs a different DS, someone new every time. Ellie can feel the stares of every single one of her co-workers when this happens, or when he snaps at them all in that oddly familiar way, something he hasn’t done in months. 

Everybody can sense the difference, but nobody says anything. 

**

Joe comes home at the end of the week. It’s a quiet event; he sneaks in after the boys have been tucked in, changing in the bathroom and then crawling into his side of the bed. 

They haven’t talked all week, save for the one text about where he should tell Tom he went. His presumption — that she would be welcoming and kind upon his return — irritates her. 

“Didn’t expect you back so soon,” she says, trying to keep her voice down so as not to wake Fred. “Thought maybe you’d call first. Or… call at all, actually.” 

Joe smiles sheepishly at her, adjusting himself in bed so that they are facing one another. “I _wanted_ to call. Thought about it every day. I just… needed some time.” 

Ellie wants to laugh, but doesn’t. Joe’s always needed more of something. More time, more space. More children. He’d taken and taken from her until she’d had nothing left, except for her job. And now he’s fighting to take that, too. To lessen her hours, to chip away at the sense of self she’s built away from him. 

“Time away from me and the kids, you mean,” she supplies. 

“Just time, love.” Ellie tries not to recoil at the term of endearment, of how little the sentiment means to her now. “We can’t keep goin’ on this way, with you working all the time. I need to see more of you. The _kids_ need to see more of you.”

The way he says _need_ makes her blood boil. How cavalierly he mentions her relationship with the boys, as if she did not grow them and keep them alive with her own body. 

“So that’s the big take away, then?” She asks, sarcastically. “You took a whole week off, doing god knows what, and you’ve somehow come to exactly the same realization you had before?”

Ellie waits, expectantly, for him to answer. His continued silence exasperates her. 

“What is it that you want, exactly?” She pauses for a moment, trying to tamp down her anger. “I mean, what is it that you hoped to gain from all this?” 

Joe stares at her for a second, as if confused by her sudden outburst. “I hoped that some time apart might… calm you down a little. There’s no reasonin’ with you when you get like this, El.” 

“Reasoning with me,” she mutters, almost to herself. She can feel her hands start to shake as she grows more irate. “So, what’s this, then? An ultimatum?” 

“It’s not—“

“‘Cause the way I see it, my options are either lessen my hours, and completely give up my career or… we divorce. That’s what you said before, isn’t it?” 

Joe reaches for her hand, trying to steady her, but she quickly pulls away. 

“I don’t want a divorce. I want this marriage to… work.” 

Ellie pulls back the covers and grabs her pillow, suddenly unable to be in the same room as him anymore. 

“Well, you know what, Joe?” She whispers. “I don’t know if that’s what I want anymore.” 

She makes her way towards the door, intending to leave, when he beats her to it. Joe places his body between her and the door, holding it closed when goes to tug on the handle. 

“Joe, let me—“

“You’ll never get custody of them,” he says, his face impossibly close to hers. One of his hands grips her arm firmly, the pressure almost painful. “If you leave me, I’ll keep the boys. You’ll never see them.” 

Ellie wrenches her arm from his hand, elbowing him aside. “I’m their mother, you can’t keep them from me.” She opens the door, then turns around to face him. “And you _can’t_ threaten me.” 

**

Downstairs, on the couch, her hands shake. Her mind races. Nothing about her interaction with Joe had gone the way she’d planned it. She’d expected to be upset. Angry, even. But never afraid. And for a brief moment — when his grip on her wrist had just started to sting — that’s exactly what she felt. 

Ellie stares at the ceiling and tries to will her body to sleep. She thinks briefly about calling Hardy, but can’t commit to it. They’ve not spoken in a week, and while she misses him desperately, she knows that speaking to him in this state will only make things worse. 

She looks around the room, taking in the walls that need to be painted, the fixtures that need re-adjusting. Out of the corner of her eye she notices a small crack on the floor near the couch, and rolls her eyes. Probably Tom playing football in the house when she’s at work, even though she’s told him not to a million times. 

Ellie is just thinking about ways to ask him about it later when something dawns on her. She gets up and grabs her purse, sifting frantically through the Gillespie files until she finds the picture she’s looking for. Pictures of Pippa and Lisa in the Gillespie house, taken years before the murder. The floors are different. 

She sends Hardy a quick, vague text, and then grabs her keys and walks out the door. 

> **Gillespie’s changed their floor. I’m coming over.**

**

By the time she pulls her car into Hardy’s driveway he’s turned the lights on outside, and is standing near the door, waiting. Something inside her warms at the sight of him, his mussed hair and wrinkled flannel pajamas. 

“I know you’re mad at me,” she says, pushing past him to get into the house. “But I think I’ve found something.”

She stops abruptly at the table, taking in the spread out files and two steaming cups of tea. Her heart flutters a bit at the sight, how he’s prepared her tea exactly the way she likes it.

“A few weeks ago, when you first took me ‘round to the Gillespie’s, I made that comment about the house being re-done. Remember?” 

Hardy sits down in the chair beside her, his knees not quite brushing up against her own. And it should feel silly, sitting here in her pajamas with him, but it doesn’t.

“So the Gillespie’s re-did their house. That’s not uncommon.” 

“But,“ she flips through the files, looking for a document. “Then I remembered this bank statement. Lee bought supplies for a job _twice_.” 

“And you think—“

“One for the job, one for the Gillespie’s. I think…” She flips through the files some more, locating the call log for Ricky’s cell phone. “I think he knew. I think… they worked together.” 

Hardy leans forward, examining the papers she’s set aside, and he’s close enough now that she can smell him. His now familiar aftershave. If she were to just lean in…

“Oh, Miller, I could kiss you!” He exclaims. 

He looks more excited than she’s seem him in months, triumphant even. She knows it isn’t about her, not really. It’s about getting justice for Pippa and Lisa. But the way he’s looking at her, like she’s capable of solving all his problems, makes her forget everything else. 

There’s a brief lull, and he continues to watch her, painfully aware of what he’s just insinuated. She can feel herself gravitating closer to him, taking him in. But, he pulls back.

“Anyways, uh…” He mumbles. “We’ll call them all in tomorrow, the whole lot of ‘em. Lee, Ricky, and Claire. Do a proper interrogation this time.” 

“Yeah,” she says, recovering. “I should probably… get home.” 

Ellie thinks briefly about staying, about turning around and marching back into his kitchen, fixing another cup of tea before settling into his couch. She wants to tell him everything. The fights she’s had with Joe, the threats he’s made against her. How distant she feels from all of it. 

She loves her boys more than life itself, and she’d never risk losing them. But she isn’t happy with the way things are, the state of her marriage. She’d never envisioned this type of life. Threats, sleeping on couches. Leaving in the middle of the night. 

Hardy walks her to her car, stopping when she reaches out for the door. “Goodnight, Miller.” 

“Night, Hardy.” 

For a moment she thinks he’s done, that he’ll simply turn around and head inside. But then, he stops, turning back after a few feet. 

“And for the record… ‘m not mad at you.” He brushes a few errant curls out of her eyes, tucking them behind her ear. “Never could be.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably not the most exciting chapter, which explains why it took me years to write. Lots of pieces to be moved for the next! Anyways, not long now...


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My most explicit chapter yet in terms of, well... everything. Prepare yourself accordingly. 
> 
> Apologies for the delay in posting! I have been subjected to both writer's block AND a truly appalling amount of Zoom meetings. Hard to say which sucked more.

Ellie wakes the next morning to the sound of dishes clattering in the kitchen, and Fred babbling happily at the table. She smiles at the sound of him before rushing over to pick him up, cradling him to her chest, breathing him in. 

Out of the corner of her eye she can see Joe puttering around in the kitchen, and the events of last night come rushing back to her. She can tell he’s still angry, can practically feel the tension radiating off of him. 

It takes everything she has not to pack her bags, to not rush upstairs and grab Tom. To flee with her boys. She takes a few deep breaths and sets Fred down, heading into the kitchen to grab a cup of tea. 

“Mornin’.” She tries for cheerful, but it comes out flat. 

Joe doesn’t turn to look at her, and for a second she’s almost hopeful. Maybe a night apart has cooled him down, made him more amenable to divorce. Maybe she won’t have to contemplate running. 

“We need to talk about last night,” he says, finally turning to face her. There’s a cold look in his eyes, hard and determined, and she knows instantly that time hasn’t settled him at all. 

“Now isn’t really the time,” she tries, gently. “‘ve got… this interview tonight, and loads of work to do before then. Can’t we just… table it for now?” 

She’s stalling a bit, leaning into the Sandbrook case so that she doesn’t have to make a decision. Ellie knows there’s nothing salvageable here, between the two of the them. Nothing left in their marriage. But to leave, to fight Joe tooth and nail for custody of their children, isn’t something she’s ready for. 

She needs time. 

“Look, I—“

“Tomorrow morning,” he interrupts. “You have until tomorrow morning to decide if this marriage is what you want. Otherwise I’m leaving, and I’m takin’ the boys with me.” 

Ellie freezes, pressing her nails into her palm in an attempt to calm herself down. She wants to fight him on this, needs to fight him, but she can’t. There isn’t enough time. 

Distantly, she can hear the vibration of her mobile, left on the coffee table in the sitting room. It jolts her back to reality, back to Hardy and Sandbrook, the two girls they’re fighting to bring justice for. 

“I… have to go,” she mumbles, quickly. “I’ll let you know by tomorrow morning.” 

**

At Hardy’s house she sits on the couch, fidgeting, with a cup of tea in her hands. He’s in the next room arranging for Lee, Claire and Ricky to be taken to Broadchurch CID for interrogation. 

“Right,” Hardy says, walking back into the room. “DS Henchard is going to be transportin’ them from Sandbrook this afternoon.” 

“So we have—“

“About three hours to go through all this, yeah.” 

They work diligently side by side, files spread across his coffee table, post-its stuck to every spare document. Ellie gets lost in the quiet monotony of the work, in the way their fingers occasionally brush against one another when reaching for something. 

She’s flipping through some notes he’d made earlier, smiling at his familiar scrawl, when it hits her: she loves him. All this time she’d assumed it was mutual attraction, friendship mixed with lust. 

But in reality, it’s so much _more_ than that. When she’s with Hardy everything else seems to slip away. The loneliness, the anxiety and grief that now plagues her waking hours. All of it fades into the background, dulled by the sheer impact his presence has on her. 

Ellie had forgotten just how good this part could feel, the early stages of love. She can’t help but smile a bit, in spite of everything that’s happening. 

“All right?” Hardy asks. He’s giving her a strange look, puzzled by her sudden giddiness. 

“Come to the pub with me,” she says, abruptly. “Tonight, I mean. After all of this is over with.”

It feels a bit risky, asking him to the pub. Ellie knows the potential trouble an outing like this could bring, how difficult it is for her body to not gravitate towards his own any time they’re in a dark, cramped space. She suddenly wants it more than anything.

Hardy sets his files down and turns to face her, confusion plain on his face. “The pub?” 

“We’ve never been to the pub before.” She nudges him, slightly. “Reckon it’s what proper mates do, yeah?” 

“Mates,” he mumbles, as if to himself. “Is that what we are?” 

It trips Ellie up, this unexpected harshness. Hardy’s never once asked her to justify what’s happening between them, nor has he ever pushed her into something she doesn’t want. 

“Course we’re mates,” she says, trying for cheerful. 

“Right.” Hardy shakes his head, as if suddenly aware of what he’d been asking. “Pub sounds great, Miller.” 

She smiles at him, a bit shakily, painfully aware of the way he’d called her _Miller_. 

They keep working. 

**

A few hours later they get the call that DS Henchard has arrived at Broadchurch CID. Hardy is unusually twitchy on the drive over, his too-long limbs shifting restlessly back and forth in the car. She stills them with a hand on his knee. 

Ellie writes it all off as sudden nervousness. The prospect of finally getting justice for two girls whose pictures he’d carried around in his wallet for over a year. 

All of this washes away when she sees him approach DS Henchard. Lee, Claire and Ricky are all taken into separate rooms while Hardy stands idly by, conversing in muted tones to this tall, brunette woman. 

There’s something about their stances, tense yet familiar, that clicks for Ellie. In an instant she realizes: DS Henchard is his ex-wife, the woman responsible for blowing up the case the first time around. 

Suddenly his twitchiness and misguided anger makes sense. 

“Right then,” Ellie says, walking up to them. “You about ready to get started?” 

Tess glances briefly at Ellie before turning back to Hardy. “Who’s this?” She asks, completely cutting Ellie out of the conversation. 

Hardy stutters a bit, casting about for a way to introduce Ellie. His hesitance irritates her almost as much as Tess’s rudeness. 

“DS Ellie Miller,” Ellie cuts in, holding out her hand. “I’m the one that found the evidence to warrant this interrogation.” 

Tess limply shakes her hand, offering her a cool smile. 

“Great. So, you’ll be listening in, then?” 

Ellie feels a barely suppressible urge to slap her. “I—“ 

“Actually, Tess,” Hardy cuts in. “I think it’s best if Miller takes the lead on this one.”

“But we’ve been working the case from the beginning,” Tess argues. 

Ellie is shocked at her arrogance, her insolence. The adultery and lying, her _catastrophic_ fuck-up, is the reason Pippa’s murderer is now roaming free. Ellie is just starting to formulate different ways to tell her that when Hardy cuts in again. 

“I really think it would be best if you watched from the other room.” 

Ellie can see the tension on his face, in the set of his shoulders. It hurts him still, she realizes, to be around Tess. He can hardly look at her. 

“Fine, Alec. If that’s what you want.” Tess emphasizes the word _Alec_ , as if she knows that Ellie has not yet been offered the privilege of calling him that. 

“It is,” he says, with an air of finality. “And we’re startin’ with Claire.” 

He touches Ellie’s shoulder briefly, and then heads towards the interrogation room. 

**

For the next several hours her and Hardy piece together the events of the night Pippa and Lisa died. 

They alternate between interrogation rooms, questioning Claire for hours before switching to Lee and Ricky. Ellie asks Lee about the floorboards he purchased twice, and can’t help but notice the look of pride in Hardy’s eyes. 

Hardy pushes Claire, questioning her loyalty, the tenuous nature of her relationship with Lee. Ellie confronts her with an older picture, one in which she wears the pendant stolen from Tess’s car. 

Five hours in, they crack. Ellie and Hardy learn of the sexual relationship between Lisa and Lee, and Ricky’s violent rage that killed her. The way he’d smashed her head repeatedly into the floor boards, the blood stains so severe Lee had to replace them. 

Ellie digs her fingernails into her palm at Lee’s recall of Pippa’s death, the way Claire had drugged her and then he’d snuck upstairs and smothered her with a pillow. 

At the end of it all, once the three of them are charged and booked, Ellie wanders into Hardy’s office. She feels sick to her stomach, horrified at the depravity they uncovered tonight.

“You know,” she says, sniffling a bit. “I expected to feel better once this was all over.” She swipes at her eyes, annoyed at herself for not being able to stop crying. “Instead I think I feel… worse, somehow.” 

Hardy looks up at her from his desk, and she can see that his eyes are red-rimmed too. “Yeah,” he says. “That never really goes away, if I’m bein’ honest.” 

She smiles weakly at him, knowing that in some ways he’s right. The justice they got for those two young girls will never bring them back, nor will it undo the betrayal, the horrors done to their bodies by the people they loved and trusted most in this world. 

Ellie looks at the clock near his desk and sighs. It’s after midnight, and she’s knackered, emotionally and physically. 

“Think maybe… we should try for the pub another day,” she says, finally. 

Hardy nods, taking his glasses off to rub at his eyes. “You should head home, get some rest.” He stands up and grabs his keys and coat, and starts to head for the door. “‘ll drive you.” 

They hardly say a word to one another on the short drive to her house. He shifts the car into park and lets it idle near her driveway, turning suddenly to face her. “Don’t worry about comin’ into work early tomorrow.”

Ellie huffs out a laugh. “Are you orderin’ me to sleep in?”

He smiles back at her, albeit weakly. “If that’s what it takes for you to get some rest, then yeah, I’m orderin’. Consider it a formal request from your areshole of a boss.” 

“Right then,” she laughs, moving to unbuckle. “Guess I’d better go.” 

Hardy stops her with a hand on her wrist, squeezing it gently. “Miller.” He pauses, waiting for her to make eye contact. “Thank you. For today and… for the rest of it. I couldn’t have…” 

He stops, suddenly shy, and she knows what he was going to say. _I couldn’t have done it without you._ He’s right, of course. And maybe that’s what scares him. 

“I know,” she smiles, squeezing his wrist back. “Good night, Hardy.” 

**

Inside her house it is completely dark, Joe and the boys having gone to bed hours earlier. Ellie sneaks upstairs to quickly wash her face and change her clothes, then grabs her pillow and heads back down. 

Deep down she knows that she isn’t in a position to leave Joe, that as it stands now, a custody battle wouldn’t likely fall in her favor. But she can’t bring herself to be near him anymore, to share the same spaces they once did. 

Downstairs she tosses and turns on the couch, her mind racing. She can’t stop thinking about the interrogation, the confessions they heard today. Her strained relationship with Joe. Her love for Hardy.

After an hour of this she abandons the idea of sleep and grabs her keys, determined to get closer with Hardy. 

His lights are still on when she pulls up in front of his house, and she smiles in spite of herself. Ellie knew he’d be awake. 

“Miller,” he says, opening the door. It comes flat, like he’d been expecting her. 

“Can I come in?” She asks, already moving to step past him. 

Ellie looks around and sees the files from earlier still spread out around his couch, their two cups of tea still half-full. He’s still in his suit, though he’s ditched the tie and jacket. 

“Everything all right?” He’s still standing near the doorway, frozen in place. 

“‘spose you know my… husband came back.” She stutters a bit over the word husband, hating its connotation. 

“I did, yeah.”

“He… threatened to take my kids, _my_ boys, if I tried to leave ‘im. So it’s… been a bit difficult lately.” 

Ellie can tell that Hardy is stuck on the word _threatened_ , his jawline suddenly tensing in anger. There’s so much that she wants to tell him, though, so she holds out a hand, stopping him from speaking.

“‘ve been struggling all week with it, feelin’ like a shit mum for being unable to protect my boys. Wrestling with the idea of staying in a marriage I don’t want to be in anymore.” She can feel the familiar burning sensation at the back of her throat, and behind her eyes. “But what gets me is that, in the middle of all of that, I’m overwhelmed by these… _feelings_ I have for you.”

“Miller—“ Hardy starts to interrupt her, then quickly stops at the look on her face. 

“Even today, in the middle of everythin’ that was happening, I actually felt _jealous_. Seeing you with Tess.” She swipes at her eyes again, the tears now coming in earnest. “I mean, what kind of person am I? We’re investigating a murder and all I can think about is…” She trails off, stepping closer to him, warmed by his proximity. 

Hardy lifts his hand, his thumb wiping at a few stray tears on her face, slowly tracing her bone structure. Slowly, he lowers his head to her own, giving her plenty of time to back away before he kisses her. 

It’s softer this time than it was before, but no less intimate. He takes his time, letting his lips lazily caress her own, his hands still on her face. 

After a while Ellie gets impatient, pushing her tongue into his mouth, wrapping her arms around his neck for leverage. His body pushes backward slightly, and she has him trapped against the wall by his door, her smaller frame pressed against his own.

She pulls away to take a breath, and he continues his exploration of her body, his mouth slowly working its way down her neck. 

“Is this what you want?” He whispers, sucking the sensitive skin beneath her earlobe. 

She moans softly, her _yeah_ coming out in an exhale. 

In an instant, then, she feels his hands on the back of her thighs, his strong grip lifting her legs to wrap around his waist. If she weren’t so lost in the moment, absolutely addled with lust, she would laugh. Hardy was carrying her to bed. 

The inside of his bedroom feels familiar to her, the sights and smells reminding her of a different day, not too long ago, when they shared their first kiss. He’d stayed up all night with her to be sure that she was okay. 

As he sets her down on the bed, gently, she’s overcome with an overwhelming sense of _love_ for him. For his tenderness, and kindness. 

She peels off her own top and bra quickly, then gets to work on the buttons of her trousers before his hand stops her. He shoves her, gently, back down on the bed before climbing on top of her. 

It should feel odd, Ellie muses, being in bed with a man who isn’t her husband. It should feel wrong and dirty, shameful. But it doesn’t. The feel of his bare chest pressed against her own feels unbearably right, the firm weight of him on top her the safest she’s felt in months. 

Ellie loves that his body presses her tight against the bed, that she can feel him, hard, against her stomach, despite the boxers and trousers he still wears. 

He kisses his way down her body, one his hands still clasping her own, before stopping at her breasts. He takes one in his mouth, sucking gently, and she can hardly breathe. She’s not used to the rasp of stubble, the way his free hand massages her other breast. 

Her body starts to undulate beneath him, hoping for friction, hoping he’ll get the hint and let her take off her trousers. She uses her own free hand to reach down between them, working on her buttons again. 

Hardy looks up at her, releasing her breast from his mouth, as if startled by her interruption. 

She smiles at him, panting, and brushes his hair out of his eyes before dragging him back up her body, exchanging a few sloppy, wet kisses. 

“I want you to fuck me,” she pants, finally working her way out of her trousers. 

Hardy looks at her, his eyes nearly all pupil, and she doesn’t think about the implications of what she’s just said. They’re past the point of return. 

“Okay,” he swallows, moving to take off his own trousers and boxers. 

Ellie blushes a bit at the size of him, the sight of his erection bobbing up near his stomach. It’s been ages since she’s slept with anyone that wasn’t Joe, though she tries not to think about that now. 

“Do we—“ He motions towards his nightstand.

“‘m on the pill,” she says, her arms looping back around his neck, pulling him on top of her again. 

Hardy seems content to kiss her, to simply enjoy the feeling of her skin against his own. It isn't until she wraps her legs around his waist that he starts to take action. 

He pushes inside her quickly, once and then twice, and they both gasp at the sensation. She can feel his warm breath against her neck as her fucks her, pushing so hard that it shoves her body further into the bed. 

Ellie feels him reach between them as he starts to get closer, seeking out her clit. She reaches her own hand down between them, guiding his fingers to the right spot, showing him the rhythm that she likes. 

"Oh, fuck," he gasps, his hand quickening its pace. 

Ellie moans loudly into his ear, gasping when he pushes deeper inside her. 

He finishes before her, moaning _Ellie_ before doubling down on his efforts between her legs, sucking at a spot between her breasts while she comes. 

It takes them both a second to recover, their heavy breathing the only sound in his bedroom. She tightens her arms around him, not quite ready to give up the weight of his body on top of her own. 

**

After a while they separate, each moving to relax on their own separate pillow. They doze for a little while, each lulled to sleep by the sound of the other's steady breathing. There's something Ellie wants to ask him, though, and it nags at her, keeping her awake.

“What you said earlier,” she starts, her voice sounding too loud in his quiet bedroom. “When you asked if we were mates, is that… Did you want to be something more? With me, I mean.” 

Ellie blushes at the awkwardness of her phrasing, how she’s practically tripping over her words. She’s never had to define her relationship with someone, never struggled to find adequate phrasing. But with Hardy everything is different. Their situation is impossible. 

“Think you already know the answer to that,” he mumbles. 

Ellie shifts in bed, moving to bury her face in the space between his shoulder and neck. Breathing him in. “It isn’t like this with other people.” 

“No,” he says, his fingers toying with a strand of her hair. “For me either.” 

They lay there in silence, meditating on what they’ve just confessed, both of them staring at the ceiling. 

Ellie had come over here tonight to get closure, to rid herself of the feelings she'd been having, but instead she'd made it worse. It felt unfathomable, suddenly, to return to her own home. To go back to the way life was before. 

She shifts again, angling her head to look at the clock on his bedside table. 3:30AM. Joe would expect her back, with an answer, in just a few hours. 

Hardy notices her looking, and releases her, shifting his body away from her own. "You're leaving?" He asks.

“I need to get back," she mumbles, suddenly embarrassed. Shame prickles at the back of her neck.

He reaches down and grabs a shirt, pulling it on while she gets dressed beside him, searching for her knickers on his floor.

"So that's it then," he says. "You're goin' back to him." 

Ellie finishes getting dressed and then walks to his side of the bed, looping her arms around his neck and kissing him, long and slow. She tries to put all of her feelings behind it, to convey the love she has for him.

"I don't have a choice," she says, sadly. "I have to go."

**

The next morning Ellie wakes early, too nervous to sleep. She finds a piece of paper on the kitchen and scribbles out a quick note. _I'm staying_. The sight of it makes her sick to her stomach.

She needs to be away from the house, somewhere neutral where she can formulate a plan. She heads into work later, after a few hours spent sitting near the beach, and scans the mostly empty car park for his car before trudging into the office. 

An hour passes, and Ellie paces back and forth, walking to and from the kitchen every few minutes. Hardy still hasn't shown up. She toys briefly with the idea of calling him when another familiar figure walks in.

“Bob,” she starts, jumping up from her desk at the sight of him. “You seen DI Hardy? We had a… meeting scheduled, but he isn’t in his office. He told me to sleep in, but... Usually he's already here.” 

Ellie tries for calm and collected, but it comes out edgy. Of course Bob knows that they didn’t have a _meeting_ scheduled, that they never have, but he plays along anyways. 

It’s easier, she thinks, if they both pretend to not know how close her and Hardy have become.

“He didn’t tell you?” Bob looks briefly confused, then sympathetic. 

“Tell me what?”

“Figures he wouldn’t.” Bob puts a hand on her shoulder, preemptively soothing her. “DI Hardy quit. Phoned Jenkinson early this mornin’, said he needed to be back in Sandbrook with his daughter.” It takes a second for her to register what he’s said, the gravity of the statement. 

“You’re sure?” Her vision narrows a bit, the edges going dark. Nausea threatens to overwhelm her. It seems impossible to her, but of course it isn’t. A small part of her had always known that this would happen. That even before things had changed between them, this had been his plan all along. He’d asked her to sleep in for a reason. 

The dam had broken between the two of them last night, all the water had rushed out. It was foolish, she thinks now, to go back to the site of the wreckage and expect to find something. 

“He’s gone, El,” Bob says, finally. "He's gone." 


	9. Chapter 9

Something inside Ellie fades away after discovering that Hardy has left. She takes off of work early and goes back out to the sea, simply letting the moment wash over her. 

She lets herself grieve him, and everything they had, for a few hours. She cries and shouts and laughs, and then she drives home.

That night, lying next to a sleeping Joe, she makes a plan. She’ll forfeit the newly opened DI opportunity, cut back on her hours at work. Every waking moment she is with her kids she will be attentive and warm, never frustrated. She’ll do as many drop-offs and pick-ups as she can, and she’ll visible at every football match Tom has in the near future.

And all the while, she’ll watch and wait. There have been slip-ups before, minor flirtations that Joe has admitted to and that they’ve laughed about later. She’ll track them all. 

She’ll leave work earlier than planned, start showing up unannounced. She’ll follow him to his various appointments, to his lad’s nights at pubs. Ellie will takes pictures and print phone records, she’ll track emails and text messages. 

When — not if — he slips up, she’ll be there, and she’ll be ready and waiting to serve him with the divorce papers she’s had drawn up for months. 

And she’s keeping her fucking kids. 

**

A month passes this way. At work she keeps her head down, mostly, a remarkably different version of the DS her coworkers once knew. 

Every once in a while she’ll go to the pub with them all, just long enough to drink a pint and exchange a few jokes. They all know she’s changed, that Hardy leaving did something to her, but they pretend not to notice. 

She’s lost in paperwork when she hears, faintly, the sound of her own name from somewhere behind her. Ellie has gotten so used to tuning out the constant noise inside the CID that it takes her a minute. 

“El,” Bob calls out again, walking towards her. He hands her an envelope, blank but for her name written neatly across the middle in a handwriting she recognizes. “Found it tucked underneath the door this mornin’.” 

“Thanks,” she mumbles, already distracted. The sight of his neat scrawl makes her heart skip a beat. She can see the envelope shaking in her hands. 

Ellie rushes to the loo, closing the stall door behind her and sitting down with a shaky sigh. She takes a few deep breaths and tears it open. 

> **Miller — Meet me here. 2:00. Friday.**

Attached is an address for what is — presumably — his new home in Sandbook, and a simple “A.H.” in lieu of a real signature. 

Water droplets start to fall on the page, smearing the ink a bit, and Ellie realizes they’re coming from her. She’s crying for what feels like the first time in ages. Since he left, really. 

In the month he’s been gone she’s tried not to think about this. The possibility that she might see him again. The idea that she’s able to see him _tomorrow,_ of all things, threatens to overwhelm her. 

Part of her wants to throw the note away, to skip the meeting. She’s spent much of her time heartbroken, or vengeful, but a part of her is angry, too. Angry that he’d left without so much as a phone call or an explanation. 

But the bigger part of her wants to go, to put on a show for him. To walk into his house and act as if she’s never been better, that she’s thrived in his absence. 

Ellie dries her eyes and folds the note up, tucking it securely back into her purse. 

She’ll make her decision tonight. 

**

Of course she decides to go. There was never any other choice. 

She spends extra time on her hair and makeup, but pretends that she hasn’t, that she always goes into work with mascara and eyeliner on. 

Ellie takes off from work early, her new normal, and nobody questions it. The entire drive to Sandbrook her hands shake. She plays a podcast but forgets to listen, and a whole episode goes by without her registering a single detail. 

When she pulls up outside of his house, she doesn’t have to wonder if she’s gotten the address right. Hardy’s waiting for her outside. 

The sight of him, after a long, interminable month apart makes her skin prickle. He’s exchanged his dark grey and black suits for a soft looking jumper, casual trousers. Her heart beats faster, accelerating under his gaze. 

“Hi,” she says, getting out of the car and walking towards him. 

Hardy smiles at her, an unfamiliar gesture. “You wanna come in?” He asks. Her feet have trapped her just outside of his entryway, and she can’t quite seem to move. 

“Sure, yeah,” she mumbles, shaking her head. 

Ellie stands in the corner of his kitchen, trying not to make eye contact with him, while he fixes them both a cup of tea. He hasn’t said much to her, outside of asking after her boys and the Broadchurch CID. He definitely hasn’t explained why he asked her here. 

“’s good to see you,” he says, finally, motioning for her to join him in the sitting room. 

It’s good to see him, too, but she doesn’t return the sentiment. It all hurts too much. 

They talk for a while about nothing at all, exchanging recent case details and making fun of old co-workers. She finds out that he turned down his old job at Sandbrook, that he’s been consulting on cold cases throughout Dorset when time permits. 

It feels different, somehow. Being here with him without the pretense of work needing to be done, a case demanding their attention. It feels intentional. 

Without files to stare at, or some random post-it to make notes on, there is nothing left to do but look at him, listen to him. When everything else fades away there’s just the two of them, both scared and heartbroken. 

“You gonna tell me why you had me drive all the way out here today, or is it a secret?” She asks, finally. 

Hardy stops mid-sentence and looks at her, remorseful. 

“I wanted to explain. About… what happened. Why I left.” 

Ellie rolls her eyes, annoyed at his bashful tone. “Doesn’t matter. I’m over it.” 

He looks wounded by this, she notices, satisfied. Good. She’d hoped to hurt him, at least a little. 

“It was Daisy,” he says. “Couple reporters in Sandbrook got wind of Lee and Claire bein’ brought to Broadchurch, and they did some diggin’.” 

Hardy stares at her, as if waiting to see if she’ll ask him to stop. For some reason, Ellie hadn’t expected Daisy to actually be the reason he’d left. She’d always assumed it was just an excuse. The easy way out. 

“Anyways, one of ‘em called me for a quote. Told me they knew it was Tess that lost the pendant, and that they were plannin’ on running with the story after we finished making arrests.” 

“So you—“

“I left that morning,” he cuts in, “to tell my daughter before she woke up and found it in the papers. Didn’t make it any easier but… figured she deserved to hear it from me and her mum instead of some bastard journalist.” 

Ellie finds herself softening towards him, despite her best attempts not to. “Is she okay?”

“As expected, I guess. Lives with me now. Spend most of my time mediatin’ arguments between her and her mum, or watching shite movies on Netflix with her.” 

Hardy says it like a complaint, but she can see the good it has done him. Ellie hadn’t realized just how much of his grief he had carried around with him until she sees him now, this lightened version of himself. 

He is — for the first time in many years — happy, she realizes. Or, not quite happy, but warmed somehow by his daughter’s presence, by the new stability in their relationship. 

“Where is she now?” She asks, looking around. Perhaps she hadn’t seen Daisy because she hadn’t thought to look. The Hardy she’d known was always alone. 

“Lookin’ at uni’s with a mate this weekend. Left a couple hours ago.” 

Ellie nods, smiling. She takes a moment to look around, noticing the distinctly female touches in his house for the first time. Patterned drapes, a set of coasters on the coffee table. 

Her stomach tightens, nauseous at the sudden realization that she resents him a bit for his happiness. Their month apart had been good to him. Time had rebuilt his relationship with his daughter, and all the while she’d been in Broadchurch, struggling every day to get by. 

“Why didn’t you call?” It’s embarrassing to be asking him this now, but she can’t seem to stop herself. She’d wanted to show him, tonight, how well things had been going for her too, in the time they’d spent apart. How quickly she’d moved on. But maybe it’s useless, she thinks, when he’s always been able to see right through her. “I would’ve understood.” 

Hardy stares at her, thinking on her statement. He reaches out, lacing their fingers together, letting their interlocked hands rest between them. “I know you would’ve.” 

“So…” 

He sighs, rubbing his face. “Didn’t know if I could. Or… should.” He takes a sip of tea, using his free hand, then turns to face her again. “What we did that night… I’ve been on the other side of that. I _know_ the damage it can do.” 

Ellie’s first thought is to pull away from him, to get up and leave before he gives her an answer she doesn’t want to hear. But he’s holding her hand, she thinks. He isn’t letting her go. 

Instead she stays silent, thinking through everything he’s said. Hardy is forever leaving her clues, speaking in half sentences. They never could say what they really meant. 

“You think if you would’ve stayed, Joe would have found out about us and used it against me.” It isn’t a question, and Hardy stays silent, letting her piece it together. “That’s why you left me the note, why you never tried to call…” 

She’d told him weeks ago about her situation with Joe, that he’d threatened her with full custody of her boys if she’d pushed the divorce. 

He’d cut himself out of her life almost immediately afterwards, not a single phone call or traceable interaction between the two of them to be had. Hardy had done the math she hadn’t. Of course Joe would have expected something between the two of them, of _course_ he would have gone digging. Wasn’t she doing exactly the same thing?

“You were trying to protect me.” 

Ellie wants to resent him for it, this unilateral decision he’d made without consulting her. The way he’d left her heartbroken for a whole month. But, all along, he’d been trying to save her. 

“And your boys,” Hardy says, unequivocally. “’s difficult with kids in the mix. You never think they’ll end up as collateral, but somehow they always do.” 

She thinks about Daisy, the girl she’s only ever seen in the pictures he keeps in his wallet. Those years she’d spent angry at the wrong person, bitter over an incomplete picture. She’d never get them back. 

_I know the damage it can do_ , he’s said. And of course he did. He was still picking up the broken pieces in his own life, just barely speaking to his daughter. He hadn’t wanted the same for her.

Ellie feels a rush of love for him, for his self-sacrificing tendencies. His own broken version of thoughtfulness.

“All this time I’d thought that it was me, that you didn’t want… this.” She squeezes his hand, needing the connection. 

Hardy stares at her in disbelief for a brief moment before grabbing ahold of her body, shifting her onto his lap. He brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes, then lets his hand rest in her hair, kissing her firmly. 

It feels amazing, like coming up for fresh air. She wraps her arms around his neck and holds on, soaking in the moment, letting herself be kissed. 

“I could never not want you, Ellie,” he murmurs, his mouth close to her ear. The use of her first name sends shivers down her spine. 

“Prove it,” she says, her lips meeting his own again.

** 

Ellie hadn’t expected them to end up here, hadn’t dared to hope they’d get another chance at this. 

They make the unspoken, mutual decision to take their time. To savor every bit of it. Neither of them know when the next time will be, and as much as it hurts, it is relief too. Life so rarely gives advanced notice. 

Hardy spends what feels like hours just kissing her, the weight of his body pressing her into the bed. She likes this part almost as much as the main event, the comfort she derives from the firm press of him on top of her. It feels safe.

They make love this time, facing each other, Ellie in Hardy’s lap. The eye contact is almost unbearable at times, his eyes never leaving her own even as he continues to push inside of her, his hands touching every part of her body. 

The two different forms of connection threaten to overwhelm her, the way they mix together creating an almost intolerable feeling of love for him, and she tries to look away but she can’t. It’s difficult, Ellie thinks, to look away from love when it’s staring your right in the face. 

As the pace accelerates she tightens her grip on his shoulders, holding on, seeking out her own release. Hardy whispers _I love you_ when he comes and she feels elated, happier than she’s ever been. 

After, he helps her dress, his fingers shaking as he re-buttons her blouse. She wants to call it all off, to undress and get back into bed again, to never leave. 

Instead, she runs her fingers through his hair, still mussed from sex. “When will I see you again?” She asks. 

Hardy finishes the buttons and then smooths out her blouse, smiling sadly. “At the Gillespie trial. We’ll both need to testify, help make sure the bastards stay in jail.” 

They haven’t officially announced the trial date yet, but Ellie knows it won’t likely be until the fall. The thought of not seeing him until then threatens to shatter her. 

She pulls him in for one last hug at the door, stalling a little, taking the time to breathe him in. Ellie never wants to forget his scent. 

“Don’t want to leave you,” she mumbles into his chest. 

He holds her tighter at her admission, pressing her as close to him as she can get. “I know,” he replies. “Soon as this is all over… the case, your divorce. You know what it’s gonna be?”

Ellie shakes her head against him, knowing he’ll feel it.

“Just you and me,” he answers for her. “Just you, me and the kids.”

Her heart aches at the thought of it, how distant it all seems. She kisses him, then, long and lingering, hoping to trap this moment in her memory. 

“I’ll see you later, Hardy,” she says finally. 

“Later, Ellie.” 

The later is both a promise and a way of easing their pain. Neither one of them can manage to say goodbye. 

**

Driving down the motorway that evening she begins to cry, overwhelmed by the many endings and beginnings of the previous months, by the mixture of love and heartbreak that exists constantly inside of her. The way it folds in on itself. 

It is a period of mourning, almost. She cries for the years of her life she’s given over to a man who never really saw her, for the two beautiful boys they created together in brief moments of happiness. She cries for Pippa and Lisa, lovely and bright young girls who will never live to experience the heartache of their twenties. She cries for the job opportunities she’s given up, the times she’s been passed over for someone else. She cries for the all-consuming love she feels for a man who is not her husband, a man she can’t reasonably expect to see for several months. 

It’s excruciating, and cathartic, to cry this way. These heaving, full-body sobs she hasn’t succumbed to since her late teens, when every inconvenience felt like the beginning of the end. 

She pulls over, finally, opening the car door and stepping out, not caring about the stares from fellow evening commuters. It feels good outside, the cool and crisp air a welcome reprieve from the inside of her car. The sun is just starting its slow descent, making way for night. 

It’ll be dark soon, she knows. When she returns home her eyes will be dry, a predictable meal on the table and two smiling boys wondering about her day. A husband sitting across from her. 

Things will carry on this way for a while, the days blurring into one another. And all the while she’ll wait, following Joe to his destinations, noting his outgoing calls. Tracking his movements. 

The future with Hardy isn’t so far away. If she reaches out in dreams she can almost touch it. 

The comfort of the moment guides her back into the car, gives her strength to drive back to Broadchurch. She can wait her whole life if she has to.

She can wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincerest gratitude to all of you wonderful readers, commenters and kudo-ers. Thank you for sticking around! And a special thank you to bitboozy for writing a story that motivated and inspired me to keep writing this one. 
> 
> I would be remiss to not add that the last scene works best if you listen to "Unchained Melody" by The Fleetwoods while reading it. :)


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